CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM A FUND RECEIVED BY BEQUEST OF WILLARD FISKE 1831-1904 FIRST LIBRARIAN OF THIS UNIVERSITY : 1868-1883 Cornell oe Library F 2515.R78 1914 h the Brazilian wilderness iit Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924019988553 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS Joavel. Pasavel wxd Colonel Rondow 2 a4 Dovid” O- photograph by Ghervie y- he. Rr CVO t A anni lh OWA on Teo AL THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT AUTHOR OF ‘' AFRICAN GAME TRAILS,” ‘' LIFE HISTORIES OF AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS” WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY KERMIT ROOSEVELT AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1914 fr. fy A4bisa5 All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian TO H. E. LAURO MULLER, SECRETARY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS FOR BRAZIL, AND TO HIS GOVERNMENTAL COLLEAGUES, AND TO COLONEL RONDON, GALLANT OFFICER, HIGH-MINDED GENTLEMAN, AND INTREPID EXPLORER, AND TO HIS ASSISTANTS, CAPTAIN AMILCAR, LIEUTENANT LYRA, LIEUTENANT MELLO, LIEUTENANT LAURIADO, AND DOCTOR CAJAZEIRA, OF THE BRAZILIAN ARMY, AND EUSEBIO OLIVEIRA, OUR COMPANIONS IN SCIENTIFIC WORK AND IN THE EXPLORATION OF THE WILDERNESS, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED, WITH ESTEEM, REGARD, AND AFFECTION, BY THEIR FRIEND, THEODORE ROOSEVELT CONTENTS CHAPTER I, THE START - - - - 2 Il. UP THE PARAGUAY i # Ill. A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY IV. THE HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY V. UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS . VI. THROUGH THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS OF WESTERN BRAZIL VII. WITH A MULE-TRAIN ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND VII. THE RIVER OF DOUBT . IX. DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER INTO THE EQUATORIAL FOREST X. TO THE AMAZON AND HOME; ZOOLOGICAL AND GEO- GRAPHICAL RESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION - APPENDICES : A. THE WORK OF THE FIELD ZOOLOGIST AND FIELD GEOGRAPHER IN SOUTH AMERICA = B. THE OUTFIT FOR TRAVELLING IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN WILDERNESS ie - C. MY LETTER OF MAY 1 TO GENERAL LAURO MULLER INDEX - m a 3s ix 331 342 360 365 ILLUSTRATIONS Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon at Navaité on the River of Doubt - - Frontispiece Photogravure from a photograph by Cherrie. FACING PAGE Group—The mussurama swallowing the jararaca or fer-de- lance, after having just killed it. Method of the mus- surama’s attack upon the jararaca - - Man-eating fish, piranha = - Group—Indian boy with coati (coon-like animal) and para- keet. Tupi girl with young ostrich. Indian girl at cooking-pot - e s Group—Indians rolling logs at wood station. Palms along the bank of the river - - - - Cattle on the upper Paraguay River - - Group—Nips with the marsh deer. Returning to the fazenda (ranch) with the marsh deer on the saddle - Group—The brown boy on the long-horned trotting steer, which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip. Colonel Roosevelt and the first jaguar = - - Group—A South American puma. A South American jaguar - - - - : - : Group—Nine-banded armadillo. Capybaras. Collared peccary - - - ' s The entire party on the way back to the ranch - xi 24 40 46 48 56 74 76 80 86 90 xii ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE An Indian village - : : : - Fe Per slate or arplag ths hab, hamnaboka, and rude table, Group—Wood ibis. South American jabiru. Sariema Group—A jabiru’s nest. A troupial nest - - : Snake-birds and cormorants - ‘ Mixed flocks of scores of cormorants and darters covered certain trees, both at sunset and after sunrise. Group—The great ant-eater. South American tapir = Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon with bush deer We hung the buck in a tree. The return from a day’s hunt - Tapir, white-lipped peccary, and bush deer. Kermit Roosevelt Two pranchas being pulled by launch with our baggage and provisions - The prancha was towed at the end of a hawser and her crew poled. Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon looking over the vast landscape - - The ground was sandy, covered with grass and with a sparse growth of stunted, twisted trees, never more than a few feet high. The Salto Bello Falls There is a sheer drop of forty or fifty yards, and a breadth perhaps three times as great. Group—One woman was making a hammock. The mothers carried the child slung against their side or hip, seated in a cloth belt or sling, which went over the opposite shoulder of the mother - Group—The game of headball played by Parecis Indians at Utiarity Falls - - - ‘ : The kick-off: a player runs forward, throws himself flat on the ground, and butts the ball toward the opposite side. Often it will be sent to and fro a dozen times from head to head until finally it rises. The Falls of Utiarity - I doubt whether, excepting of course Niagara, there is a waterfall in North America which outranks this, if both volume and beauty are considered. ; 98 184 186 188 ILLUSTRATIONS xiii FACING PAGE Group—A lonely grave by the wayside. The Parecis dance The dance of the Parecis Indians — - i a “ A number carried pipes, through which they blew a kind of deep, stifled whistle in time to the dancing. Group—Tres Burity. The kitchen under the ox-hide at Campos Novos ¢ 5 - At the Juruena we met a party of Nhambiquaras, very friendly and sociable, and very glad to see Colonel Rondon - - - Group—Nhambiquara child with a pet monkey. The men had holes pierced through the septum of the nose and through the upper lip, and wore a straw through each hole - : : Group—Maloca or beehive hut of the Nhambiquaras. A Nhambiquara shelter hut and utensils - - The ant-hills were not infrequently taller than a horseman’s head - . 2 Group—A Nhambiquara family. Nhambiquara women and children. “ Adam and Eve” Group—Nhambiquara archer. First position. Second position Group—I did my writing in headnet and gauntlets. Colonel Roosevelt’s canoe disappears down the River of Doubt - Colonel Roosevelt’s and Colonel Rondon’s canoes at the mouth of the Bandeira In mid-afternoon we came to the mouth of a big and swift affluent. ... It was undoubtedly the Bandeira. The rapids of Navaité - Z : - There were many curls, and one or two regular falls. Cherrie holding a rifle to show the width of the rapids at Navaité - - - At one point it was less than two yards across. Portaging around Navaité Rapids - - We spent March 3 and 4, and the morning of the 5th, in portaging around the rapids. 190 194 198 206 208 212 220 226 228 236 238 242 244 246 Xiv ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Rapids of the Divida - B - 2 - 252 Dragging the canoes over a portage by means of ropes and logs - - “ - - - 256 Group—Manner of dragging the canoes across a hilly portage. Making the big canoe which was soon afterward lost 258 Group—The Upper Duvida. Cherrie in his canoe - 268 Group—Red-and-yellow macaw. Egret. Curassow. Hya- cinthine macaw. Toco toucan. Trumpeter - 276 The river rushed through a wild gorge, a chasm or canyon, between two mountains 288 Groups—Rapids at the chasm. We bathed and swam in the river, although in it we caught piranhas 298 Group—Castanho-tree (Brazil-nut). Pacova-tree - 304 Group—aAt the rubber-man’s house. The canoe rigged with a cover, under which Colonel Roosevelt travelled when sick - - - - - - $10 The camaradas, gathered around the monument erected by Colonel Rondon - - 320 MAPS Map showing the entire South American journey of Colonel Roosevelt and members of the expedition - - 1 Map forwarded by Lieutenant Lyra, showing the route of the expedition, and the positions of the new river and of the Gy-Parané, and of the upper tributaries of the Juruena - - < - - 328 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 70° 00° 50° 40° of 10 TROPIC _|_--- | eas \ L.L.POATES CO., NAY. CARIBREA AN _.. | \ or ____ CAPRICORN _- Concepcion N 8A iN i) ry oo 0 a wCARACAS ag N EQuator Jose Bonifacié A \ | @SUCRE Cornmbél| Coimbra 51 Porto Murtinh Tquique' YP, 4 ‘orto Alegre Valdivia Col. Roosevelt's trip is shown with an unbroken line thus, === save on the Unknown River 50" which is shown by broken line thus,--__-_« - ie Fiala’s trip down the Papagaio (never before de- scended) and the Tapajos is shown thus, MMM Miller's trip down the Gy-Parana and the Madeira is shown thus,._______________ sesees / / / 90° 60 from 50° Green. 40 30° 20° Man showing the entire South American journey of Colonel Roosevelt and members of the expedition THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS CHAPTER I THE START One day in 1908, when my presidential term was coming to a close, Father Zahm, a priest whom I knew, came in to call on me. Father Zahm and I had been cronies for some time, because we were both of us fond of Dante and of history and of science—I had always commended to theologians his book, “ Evolution and Dogma.” He was an Ohio boy, and his early schooling had been ob- tained in old-time American fashion in a little log school; where, by the way, one of the other boys was Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, afterward the famous war corre- spondent and friend of Skobeloff. Father Zahm told me that MacGahan, even at that time, added an utter fearlessness to chivalric tenderness for the weak, and ‘was the defender of any small boy who was oppressed by a larger one. Later Father Zahm was at Notre Dame University, in Indiana, with Maurice Egan, whom, when I was President, I appointed minister to Denmark. On the occasion in question Father Zahm had just retumed from a trip across the Andes and down the Amazon, and came in to propose that after I left the 1 2 THE START [CHAP. I Presidency he and I should go up the Paraguay into the interior of South America. At the time I wished to go to Africa, and so the subject was dropped; but from time to time afterward we talked it over. Five years later, in the spring of 1918, I accepted invitations, conveyed through the governments of Argentina and Brazil, to address certain learned bodies in these countries. Then it occurred to me that, instead of making the conventional tourist trip purely by sea round South America, after I had finished my lectures I would come north through the middle of the continent into the valley of the Amazon ; and I decided to write Father Zahm and tell him my intentions. Before doing so, however, I desired to see the authorities of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, to find out whether they cared to have me take a couple of naturalists with me into Brazil and make a collecting trip for the museum. Accordingly, I wrote to Frank Chapman, the curator of ornithology of the museum, and accepted his invita- tion to lunch at the museum one day early in June. At the lunch, in addition to various naturalists, to my astonishment I also found Father Zahm; and as soon as I saw him I told him I was now intending to make the South American trip. It appeared that he had made up his mind that he would take it himself, and had actually come on to see Mr. Chapman to find out if the latter could recommend a naturalist to go with him ; and he at once said he would accompany me. Chapman was pleased when he found out that we intended to go up the Paraguay and across into the valley of the Amazon, because much of the ground over which we were to pass had not been covered by collectors. He saw Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president of the MY COMPANIONS 3 museum, who wrote me that the museum would be pleased to send under me a couple of naturalists, whom, with my approval, Chapman would choose. The men whom Chapman recommended were Messrs. George K. Cherrie and Leo E. Miller. I gladly ac- cepted both. The former was to attend chiefly to the ornithology, and the latter to the mammalogy, of the expedition ; but each was to help out the other. No two better men for such a trip could have been found. Both were veterans of the tropical American forests. Miller was a young man, born in Indiana, an enthusiastic naturalist with good literary as well as scientific training. He was at the time in the Guiana forests, and joined us at Barbados. Cherrie was an older man, born in Iowa, but now a farmer in Vermont. He had a wife and six children. Mrs. Cherrie had accompanied him during two or three years of their early married life in his collecting trips along the Orinoco. Their second child was born when they were in camp a couple of hundred miles from any white man or woman. One night a few weeks later they were obliged to leave a camping-place, where they had intended to spend the night, because the baby was fretful, and its cries attracted a jaguar, which prowled nearer and nearer in the twilight until they thought it safest once more to put out into the open river and seek a new resting-place. Cherrie had spent about twenty-two years collecting in the American tropics. Like most of the field-naturalists I have met, he was an unusually efficient and fearless man; and willy-nilly he had been forced at times to vary his career by taking part in insurrections. Twice he had been behind the bars in consequence, on one occasion spend- ing three months in a prison of a certain South American state, expecting each day to be taken out and shot. In 4 THE START [CHAP. I another state he had, as an interlude to his ornithological pursuits, followed the career of a gun-runner, acting as such off and on for two and a half years. The particular revolutionary chief whose fortunes he was following finally came into power, and Cherrie immortalized his name by naming a new species of ant-thrush after him— a delightful touch, in its practical combination of those not normally kindred pursuits, ornithology and gun- running. In Anthony Fiala, a former arctic explorer, we found an excellent man for assembling equipment and taking charge of its handling and shipment. In addition to his four years in the arctic regions, Fiala had served in the New York Squadron in Porto Rico during the Spanish War, and through his service in the squadron had been brought into contact with his little Tennessee wife. She came down with her four children to say good-bye to him when the steamer left. My secretary, Mr. Frank Harper, went with us. Jacob Sigg, who had served three years in the United States Army, and was both a hospital nurse and a cook, as well as having a natural taste for adventure, went as the personal attendant of Father Zahm. In southern Brazil my son Kermit joined me. He had been bridge-building, and a couple of months previously, while on top of a long steel span, something went wrong with the derrick, he and the steel span coming down together on the rocky bed beneath. He escaped with two broken ribs, two teeth knocked out, and a knee partially dislocated, but was practically all right again when he started with us. In its composition ours was a typical American expe- dition. Kermit and I were of the old Revolutionary stock, and in our veins ran about every strain of blood that there was on this side of the water during colonial OUR EQUIPMENT 5 times. Cherrie’s father was born in Ireland, and his mother in Scotland; they came here when very young, and his father served throughout the Civil War in an Iowa cavalry regiment. His wife was of old Revolutionary stock. Father Zahm’s father was an Alsacian immigrant, and his mother was partly of Irish and partly of old American stock, a descendant of a niece of General Braddock. Miller’s father came from Germany, and his mother from France. Fiala’s father and mother were both from Bohemia, being Czechs, and his father had served four years in the Civil War in the Union Army—his Tennessee wife was of old Revolutionary stock. Harper was born in England, and Sigg in Switzerland. We were as varied in religious creed as in ethnic origin. Father Zahm and Miller were Catholics, Kermit and Harper Episcopalians, Cherrie a Pres- byterian, Fiala a Baptist, Sigg a Lutheran, while 1 belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. For arms the naturalists took 16-bore shotguns, one of Cherrie’s having a rifle barrel underneath. The firearms for the rest of the party were supplied by Kermit and myself, including my Springfield rifle, Kermit’s two Winchesters, a 405 and 30-40, the Fox 12-gauge shotgun, and another 16-gauge gun, and a couple of revolvers, a Colt, and a Smith and Wesson. We took from New York a couple of canvas canoes, tents, mosquito-bars, plenty of cheese-cloth, including nets for the hats, and both light cots and hammocks. We took ropes and pulleys, which proved invaluable on our canoe trip. Each equipped himself with the clothing he fancied. Mine consisted of khaki, such as I wore in Africa, with a couple of United States Army flannel shirts and a couple of silk shirts, one pair of hob- nailed shoes with leggings, and one pair of laced leather 6 THE START [cHaP. I boots coming nearly to the knee. Both the naturalists told me that it was well to have either the boots or leggings as a protection against snake-bites, and I also had gauntlets because of the mosquitoes and sand-flies. We intended where possible to live on what we could get from time to time in the country, but we took some United States Army emergency rations, and also ninety cans, each containing a day’s provisions for five men, made up by Fiala. The trip I proposed to take can be understood only by those who have a slight knowledge of South American topography. The great mountain chain of the Andes extends down the entire length of the western coast, so close to the Pacific Ocean that no rivers of any importance enter it. The rivers of South America drain into the Atlantic. Southernmost South America, including over half of the territory of the Argentine Republic, consists chiefly of a cool, open plains country. Northward of this country, and eastward of the Andes, lies the great bulk of the South American continent, which is included in the tropical and sub-tropical regions. Most of this territory is Brazilian. Aside from certain relatively small stretches drained by coast rivers, this immense region of tropical and sub-tropical America east of the Andes is drained by the three great river systems of the Plate, the Amazon, and the Orinoco. At their headwaters the Amazon and the Orinoco systems are actually connected by a sluggish natural canal. The headwaters of the northern affluents of the Paraguay and the southern affluents of the Amazon are sundered by a stretch of high land, which toward the east broadens out into the central plateau of Brazil. Geologically this is a very ancient region, having appeared above the waters before the dawning of the THE PARAGUAY BASIN 7 age of reptiles, or, indeed, of any true land vertebrates on the globe. This plateau is a region partly of healthy, rather dry and sandy, open prairie, partly of forest. The great and low-lying basin of the Paraguay, which borders it on the south, is one of the largest, and the still greater basin of the Amazon, which borders it on the north, is the very largest of all the river-basins of the earth. In these basins, but especially in the basin of the Amazon, and thence in most places northward to the Caribbean Sea, lie the most extensive stretches of tropical forest to be found anywhere. The forests of tropical West Africa, and of portions of the Farther-Indian region, are the only ones that can be compared with them. Much difficulty has been experienced in exploring these forests, because under the torrential rains andsteam- ing heat the rank growth of vegetation becomes almost impenetrable, and the streams difficult of navigation ; while white men suffer much from the terrible insect scourges and the deadly diseases which modern science has discovered to be due very largely to insect-bites. The fauna and flora, however, are of great interest. The American museum was particularly anxious to obtain collections from the divide between the head- waters of the Paraguay and the Amazon, and from the southern affluents of the Amazon. Our purpose was to ascend the Paraguay as nearly as possible to the head of navigation, thence cross to the sources of one of the affluents of the Amazon, and if possible descend it in canoes built on the spot. The Paraguay is regularly navigated as high as boats can go. The starting-point for our trip was to be Asuncion, in the state of Paraguay. My exact plan of operations was necessarily a little indefinite, but on reaching Rio de Janeiro the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Lauro Miiller, who had been 8 THE START [cHaP. I kind enough to take great personal interest in my trip, informed me that he had arranged that on the head- waters of the Paraguay, at the town of Caceres, I would be met by a Brazilian Army Colonel, himselt chiefly Indian by blood, Colonel Rondon. Colonel Rondon has been for a quarter of a century the fore- most explorer of the Brazilian hinterland. He was at the time in Manaos, but his lieutenants were in Caceres, and had been notified that we were coming. More important still, Mr. Lauro Miiller—who is not only an efficient public servant, but a man of wide cultivation, with a quality about him that reminded me of John Hay—offered to help me make my trip of much more consequence than I had originally intended. He has taken a keen interest in the exploration and develop- ment of the interior of Brazil, and he believed that my expedition could be used as a means toward spreading abroad a more general knowledge of the country. He told me that he would co-operate with me in every way if I cared to undertake the leadership of a serious expedition into the unexplored portion of western Matto Grosso, and to attempt the descent of a river which flowed nobody knew whither, but which the best informed men believed would prove to be a very big river, utterly unknown to geographers. I eagerly and gladly accepted, for I felt that with such help the trip could be made of much scientific value, and that a substantial addition could be made to the geographical knowledge of one of the least-known parts of South America. Accordingly, it was arranged that Colonel Rondon and some assistants and scientists should meet me at or below Corumba, and that we should attempt the descent of the river, of which they had already come across the headwaters. POISONOUS SNAKES 9 I had to travel through Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine, and Chile for six weeks to fulfil my speak- ing engagements. Fiala, Cherrie, Miller, and Sigg left me at Rio, continuing to Buenos Aires in the boat in which we had all come down from New York. From Buenos Aires they went up the Paraguay to Corumba, where they awaited me. The two naturalists went first, to do all the collecting that was possible; Fiala and Sigg travelled more leisurely, with the heavy baggage. Before I followed them I witnessed an incident worthy of note from the standpoint of a naturalist, and of possible importance to us because of the trip we were about to take. South America, even more than Australia and Africa, and almost as much as India, is a country of poisonous snakes. As in India, although not to the same degree, these snakes are responsible for a very serious mortality among human beings. One of the most interesting evidences of the modern advance in Brazil is the establishment near Sado Paulo of an institution especially for the study of these poisonous snakes, so as to secure antidotes to the poison and to develop enemies to the snakes themselves. We wished to take into the interior with us some bottles of the anti-venom serum, for on such an expedition there is always a certain danger from snakes. On one of his trips Cherrie had lost a native follower by snake-bite. The man was bitten while out alone in the forest, and, although he reached camp, the poison was already work- ing in him, so that he could give no intelligible account of what had occurred, and he died in a short time. Poisonous snakes are of several different families, but the most poisonous ones, those which are dangerous to man, belong to the two great families of the colubrine 10 THE START [cHaP. I snakes and the vipers. Most of the colubrine snakes are entirely harmless, and are the common snakes that we meet everywhere. But some of them—the cobras, for instance—develop into what are on the whole perhaps the most formidable of all snakes. The only poisonous colubrine snakes in the New World are the ring-snakes, the coral-snakes of the genus elaps, which are found from the extreme southern United States southward to the Argentine. These coral-snakes are not vicious, and have small teeth which cannot pene- trate even ordinary clothing. They are only dangerous if actually trodden on by someone with bare feet, or if seized in the hand. There are harmless snakes very like them in colour, which are sometimes kept as pets ; but it behoves every man who keeps such a pet, or who handles such a snake, to be very sure as to the genus to which it belongs. The great bulk of the poisonous snakes of America, including all the really dangerous ones, belong to a division of the widely spread family of vipers which is known as the pit-vipers. In South America these in- clude two distinct subfamilies or genera—whether they are called families, subfamilies, or genera would de- pend, I suppose, largely upon the varying personal views of the individual describer on the subject of herpetological nomenclature. One genus includes the rattlesnakes, of which the big Brazilian species is as dangerous as those of the southern United States. But the large majority of the species and individuals of dangerous snakes in tropical America are included in the genus Jachesis. ‘These are active, vicious, aggres- sive snakes without rattles. They are exceedingly poisonous. Some of them grow to a very large size, being, indeed, among the largest poisonous snakes in THE NATURE OF SNAKE POISON | 11 the world—their only rivals in this respect being the diamond rattlesnake of Florida, one of the African mambas, and the Indian hamadryad, or snake-eating cobra. The fer-de-lance, so dreaded in Martinique, and the equally dangerous bushmaster of Guiana, are in- cluded in this genus. A dozen species are known in Brazil, the biggest one being identical with the Guiana bushmaster, and the most common one, the jararaca, being identical, or practically identical, with the fer-de- lance. The snakes of this genus, like the rattlesnakes and the Old-World vipers and puff-adders, possess long poison-fangs which strike through clothes or any other human garment except stout leather. Moreover, they are very aggressive, more so than any other snakes in the world, except possibly some of the cobras. As, in addition, they are numerous, they are a source of really frightful danger to scantily clad men who work in the fields and forests, or who for any reason are abroad at night. The poison of venomous serpents is not in the least uniform in its quality. On the contrary, the natural forces—to use a term which is vague, but which is as exact as our present-day knowledge permits—that have developed in so many different families of snakes these poison-fangs have worked in two or three totally different fashions. Unlike the vipers, the colubrine poisonous snakes have small fangs, and their poison, though on the whole even more deadly, has entirely different effects, and owes its deadliness to entirely different qualities. Even within the same family there are wide differences. In the jararaca an extraordinary quantity of yellow venom is spurted from the long poison-fangs. This poison is secreted in large glands which, among |vipers, give the head its peculiar ace-of- % 12 THE START (CHAP. I spades shape. The rattlesnake yields a much smaller quantity of white venom, but, quantity for quantity, this white venom is more deadly. It is the great quantity of venom injected by the long fangs of the jararaca, the bushmaster, and their fellows that renders their bite so generally fatal. Moreover, even between these two allied genera of pit-vipers, the differences in the action of the poison are sufficiently marked to be easily recognizable, and to render the most effective anti-venomous serum for each slightly different from the other. However, they are near enough alike to make this difference, in practice, of comparatively small consequence. In practice the same serum can be used to neutralize the effect of either, and, as will be seen later on, the snake that is immune to one kind of venom is also immune to the other. But the effect of the venom of the poisonous colu- brine snakes is totally different from, although to the full as deadly as, the effect of the poison of the rattle- snake or jararaca. The serum that is an antidote as regards the pit-viper is wholly or wellnigh useless as regards the colubrines. The animal that is immune to the bite of one may not be immune to the bite of the other. The bite of a cobra or other colubrine poisonous snake is more painful in its immediate effects than is the bite of one of the big vipers. The victim suffers more. There is a greater effect on the nerve-centres, but less swelling of the wound itself, and, whereas the blood of the rattlesnake’s victim coagulates, the blood of the victim of an elapine snake—that is, of one of the only poisonous American colubrines—becomes watery and incapable of coagulation. Snakes are highly specialized in every way, including their prey. Some live exclusively on warm-blooded “INSTITUTO SERUMTHERAPICO” 13 animals, on mammals, or birds. Some live exclusively on batrachians, others only on lizards, a few only on insects. A very few species live exclusively on other snakes. ‘These include one very formidable venomous snake, the Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, and several non-poisonous snakes. In Africa I killed a small cobra which contained within it a snake but a few inches shorter than itself; but, as far as I could find out, snakes were not the habitual diet of the African cobras. The poisonous snakes use their venom to kill their victims, and also to kill any possible foe which they think menaces them, Some of them are good-tempered, and only fight if injured or seriously alarmed. Others are excessively irritable, and on rare occasions will even attack of their own accord when entirely unprovoked and unthreatened. On reaching Sao Paulo on our southward journey from Rio to Montevideo, we drove out to the “Instituto Serumthérapico,” designed for the study of the effects of the venom of poisonous Brazilian snakes. Its director is Doctor Vital Brazil, who has performed a most extra- ordinary work, and whose experiments and investigations are not only of the utmost value to Brazil, but will ulti- mately be recognized as of the utmost value for humanity at large. I know of no institution of similar kind anywhere. It has a fine modern building, and the best appliances for making experiments with all kinds of serpents, living and dead, with the object of discovering all the properties of their several kinds of venom, and of developing various anti-venom serums which nullify the effects of the different venoms. Every effort is made to teach the people at large, by practical demonstration in the open field, the lessons thus learned in the laboratory. One notable result has been the 14 THE START [CHAP. I diminution in the mortality from snake-bites in the province of Sao Paulo. In connection with his institute, and right by the laboratory, the doctor has a large serpentarium, in which quantities of the common poisonous and non-poisonous snakes are kept, and some of the rarer ones. He has devoted considerable time to the effort to find out if there are any natural enemies of the poisonous snakes of his country, and he has discovered that the most formidable enemy of the many dangerous Brazilian snakes is a non-poisonous, entirely harmless, rather uncommon Brazilian snake, the mussurama. Of all the interesting things the doctor showed us, by far the most interesting was the opportunity of witnessing for ourselves the action of the mussurama toward a dangerous snake. The doctor first showed us specimens of the various important snakes, poisonous and non-poisonous, in alcohol. Then he showed us preparations of the different kinds of venom and of the different anti- venom serums, presenting us with some of the latter for our use on the journey. He has been able to pro- duce to distinct kinds of anti-venom serum, one to neutralize the virulent poison of the rattlesnake’s bite, the other to neutralize the poison of the different snakes of the lachesis genus. These poisons are somewhat different, and moreover there appear to be some differences between the poisons of the different species of lachesis ; in some cases the poison is nearly colourless, and in others, as in that of the jararaca, whose poison I saw, it is yellow. But the vital difference is that between all these poisons of the pit-vipers and the poisons of the colubrine snakes, such as the cobra and the coral-snake. As yet EXPERIMENTS WITH SNAKES 15 the doctor has not been able to develop an anti-venom serum which will neutralize the poison of these colubrine snakes. Practically this is a matter of little consequence in Brazil, for the Brazilian coral-snakes are dangerous only when mishandled by someone whose bare skin is exposed to the bite. The numerous accidents and fatalities continually occurring in Brazil are almost always to be laid to the account of the several species of lachesis and the single species of rattlesnake. Finally, the doctor took us into his lecture-room to show us how he conducted his experiments. The various snakes were in boxes, on one side of the room, under the care of a skilful and impassive assistant, who handled them with the cool and fearless caution of the doctor himself. The poisonous ones were taken out by means of a long-handled steel hook. All that is necessary to do is to insert this under the snake and lift him off the ground. He is not only unable to escape, but he is un- able to strike, for he cannot strike unless coiled so as to give himself support and leverage. The table on which the snakes are laid is fairly large and smooth, differing in no way from an ordinary table. There were a number of us in the room, including two or three photographers. The doctor first put on the table a non-poisonous but very vicious and truculent colubrine snake. It struck right and left at us. Then the doctor picked it up, opened its mouth, and showed that it had no fangs, and handed it to me. I also opened its mouth and examined its teeth, and then put it down, whereupon, its temper having been much ruffled, it struck violently at me two or three times. In its action and temper this snake was quite as vicious as the most irritable poisonous snakes. Yet it is entirely harmless. One of the innumerable mysteries of nature which are at 16 THE START [CHAP. I present absolutely insoluble is why some snakes should be sovicious and others absolutely placid and good-tempered. After removing the vicious harmless snake, the doctor warned us to get away from the table, and his attendant put on it, in succession, a very big lachesis—of the kind called bushmaster—and a big rattlesnake. Each coiled menacingly, a formidable brute ready to attack anything that approached. Then the attendant adroitly dropped his iron crook on the neck of each in succession, seized it right behind the head, and held it toward the doctor. The snake’s mouth was in each case wide open, and the great fangs erect and very evident. It would not have been possible to have held an African ring-necked cobra in such fashion, because the ring-neck would have ejected its venom through the fangs into the eyes of the on- lookers. ‘There was no danger in this case, and the doctor inserted a shallow glass saucer into the mouth of the snake behind the fangs, permitted it to eject its poison, and then himself squeezed out the remaining poison from the poison-bags through the fangs. From the big lachesis came a large quantity of yellow venom, a liquid which speedily crystallized into a number of minute crystals. The rattlesnake yielded a much less quantity of white venom, which the doctor assured us was far more active than the yellow lachesis venom. Then each snake was returned to its box unharmed. After this the doctor took out of a box and presented to me a fine, handsome, nearly black snake, an indi- vidual of the species called the mussurama. ‘This is in my eyes perhaps the most interesting serpent in the world. It is a big snake, four or five feet long, some- times even longer, nearly black, lighter below, with a friendly, placid temper. It lives exclusively on other snakes, and is completely immune to the poison of WIDE DIFFERENCES IN SNAKES | 17 the lachesis and rattlesnake groups, which contain all the really dangerous snakes of America. Doctor Brazil told me that he had conducted many experiments with this interesting snake. It is not very common, and prefers wet places in which to live. It lays eggs, and the female remains coiled above the eggs, the object being apparently not to warm them, but to prevent too great evaporation. It will not eat when moulting, nor in cold weather. Otherwise it will eat a small snake every five or six days, or a big one every fortnight. There is the widest difference, both among poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, not alone in nervousness and irascibility, but also in ability to accustom themselves to out-of-the-way surroundings. Many species of non- poisonous snakes which are entirely harmless, to man or to any other animal except their small prey, are nevertheless very vicious and truculent, striking right and left and biting freely on the smallest provocation —this is the case with the species of which the doctor had previously placed a specimen on the table. More- over, many snakes, some entirely harmless and some vicious ones, are so nervous and uneasy that it is with the greatest difficulty they can be induced to eat in captivity, and the slightest disturbance or interference will prevent their eating. There are other snakes, how- ever—of which the mussurama is perhaps the best example—which are very good captives, and at the same time very fearless, showing a complete indifference, not only to being observed, but to being handled when they are feeding. There is, in the United States, a beautiful and attrac- tive snake, the king-snake, with much the same habits as the mussurama. It is friendly toward mankind, and 2 18 THE START [cHaP. I not poisonous, so that it can be handled freely. It feeds on other serpents, and will kill a rattlesnake as big as itself, being immune to the rattlesnake venom. Mr. Ditmars, of the Bronx Zoo, has made many interesting experiments with these king-snakes. I have had them in my own possession. They are good-natured, and can generally be handled with impunity, but I have known them to bite, whereas Doctor Brazil informed me that it was almost impossible to make the mussurama bite a man. The king-snake will feed greedily on other snakes in the presence of man—I knew of one case where it partly swallowed another snake while both were in a small boy’s pocket. It is immune to viper poison, but it is not immune to colubrine poison. A couple of years ago I was informed of a case where one of these king-snakes was put into an enclosure with an Indian snake-eating cobra, or hamadryad, of about the same size. It killed the cobra, but made no effort to swallow it, and very soon showed the effects of the cobra poison. I believe it afterwards died, but, unfortunately, I have mis- laid my notes, and cannot now remember the details of the incident. Doctor Brazil informed me that the mussurama, like the king-snake, was not immune to the colubrine poison. A mussurama in his possession, which had with im- punity killed and eaten several rattlesnakes and repre- sentatives of the lachesis genus, also killed and ate a venomous coral-snake, but shortly afterwards itself died from the effects of the poison. It is one of the many puzzles of nature that these American serpents which kill poisonous serpents should only have grown immune to the poison of the most dangerous American poisonous serpents, the pit-vipers, and should not have become immune to the poison of the coral-snakes, which are PECULIARITIES OF SNAKE POISON 19 commonly distributed throughout their range. Yet, judging by the one instance mentioned by Dr. Brazil, they attack and master these coral-snakes, although the conflict in the end results in their death. It would be interesting to find out whether this attack was excep- tional—that is, whether the mussurama has or has not, as a species, learned to avoid the coral-snake. If it was not exceptional, then not only is the instance highly curious in itself, but it would also go far to explain the failure of the mussurama to become plentiful. For the benefit of those who are not acquainted with the subject, I may mention that the poison of a poison- ous snake is not dangerous to its own species unless injected in very large doses, about ten times what would normally be injected by a bite; but that it is deadly to all other snakes, poisonous or non-poisonous, save as regards the very few species which themselves eat poisonous snakes. The Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, is exclusively a snake-eater. It evidently draws a sharp distinction between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, for Mr. Ditmars has recorded that two indi- viduals in the Bronx Zoo which are habitually fed on harmless snakes, and attack them eagerly, refused to attack a copperhead which was thrown into their cage, being evidently afraid of this pit-viper. It would be interesting to find out if the hamadryad is afraid to prey on all pit-vipers, and also whether it will prey on its small relative, the true cobra—for it may well be that, even if not immune to the viper poison, it is immune to the poison of its close ally, the smaller cobra. All these and many other questions would be speedily settled by Doctor Brazil if he were given the oppor- tunity to test them. It must be remembered, more- 20 THE START [cHaAP. I over, that not only have his researches been of absorbing value from the standpoint of pure science, but that they also have a real utilitarian worth. He is now collecting and breeding the mussurama. The favourite prey of the mussurama is the most common, and therefore the most dangerous, poisonous snake of Brazil, the jararaca, which is known in Martinique as the fer-de-lance. In Martinique and elsewhere this snake is such an object of terror as to be at times a genuine scourge. Surely it would be worth while for the authorities of Martinique to import specimens of the mussurama to that island. The mortality from snake-bite in British India is very great. Surely it would be well worth while for the able Indian Government to copy Brazil, and create such an institute as that over which Doctor Vital Brazil is the curator. At first sight it seems extraordinary that poisonous serpents, so dreaded by and so irresistible to most animals, should be so utterly helpless before the few creatures that prey on them. But the explanation is easy. Any highly specialized creature, the higher its specialization, is apt to be proportionately helpless when once its peculiar specialized traits are effectively nullified by an opponent. This is eminently the case with the most dangerous poisonous snakes. In them a highly peculiar specialization has been carried to the highest point. They rely for attack and defence purely on their poison-fangs. All other means and methods of attack and defence have atrophied. They neither crush nor tear with their teeth nor constrict with their bodies. The poison-fangs are slender and delicate, and, save for the poison, the wound inflicted is of a trivial character. In consequence, they are utterly helpless in the presence of any animal which the poison does not THE MUSSURAMA 21 affect. There are several mammals immune to snake- bite, including various species of hedgehog, pig, and mongoose—the other mammals which kill them do so by pouncing on them unawares, or by avoiding their stroke through sheer quickness of movement; and probably this is the case with most snake-eating birds. The mongoose is very quick, but in some cases at least —I have mentioned one in the “ African Game Trails” —it permits itself to be bitten by poisonous snakes, treating the bite with utter indifference. There should be extensive experiments made to determine if there are species of mongoose immune to both cobra and viper poison. Hedgehogs, as determined by actual ex- periments, pay no heed at all to viper poison even when bitten on such tender places as the tongue and lips, and eat the snake as if it were a radish. Even among animals which are not immune to the poison different species are very differently affected by the different kinds of snake poisons. Not only are some species more resistant than others to all poisons, but there is a wide variation in the amount of immunity each displays to any given venom. One species will be quickly killed by the poison from one species of snake, and be fairly resistant to the poison of another ; whereas in another species the conditions may be directly reversed. The mussurama which Doctor Brazil handed me was a fine specimen, perhaps four and a half feet long. I lifted the smooth, lithe bulk in my hands, and then let it twist its coils so that it rested at ease in my arms ; it glided to and fro, on its own length, with the sinuous grace of its kind, and showed not the slightest trace of either nervousness or bad temper. Meanwhile the doctor bade his attendant put on the table a big jara- 22 THE START [cHaP. I raca, or fer-de-lance, which was accordingly done. The jararaca was about three feet and a half or perhaps nearly four feet long—that is, it was about nine inches shorter than the mussurama. The latter, which I con- tinued to hold in my arms, behaved with friendly and impassive indifference, moving easily to and fro through my hands, and once or twice hiding its head between the sleeve and the body of my coat. The doctor was not quite sure how the mussurama would behave, for it had recently eaten a small snake, and unless hungry it pays no attention whatever to venomous snakes, even when they attack and bite it. However, it fortunately proved still to have a good appetite. The jararaca was alert and vicious. It partly coiled itself on the table, threatening the bystanders. I put the big black serpent down on the table four or five feet from the enemy and headed in its direction. As soon as I let go with my hands it glided toward where the threatening, formidable-looking lance-head lay stretched in a half-coil. The mussurama displayed not the slightest sign of excitement. Apparently it trusted little to its eyes, for it began to run its head along the body of the jararaca, darting out its flickering tongue to feel just where it was, as it nosed its way up toward the head of its antagonist. So placid were its actions that I did not at first suppose that it meant to attack, for there was not the slightest exhibition of anger or excitement. It was the jararaca that began the fight. It showed no fear whatever of its foe, but its irritable temper was aroused. by the proximity and actions of the other, and like a flash it drew back its head and struck, burying its fangs in the forward part of the mussurama’s body. Immediately the latter struck in return, and the counter- A SNAKE FIGHT 23 attack was so instantaneous that it was difficult to see just what had happened. There was tremendous writhing and struggling on the part of the jararaca; and then, leaning over the knot into which the two serpents were twisted, I saw that the mussurama had seized the jararaca by the lower jaw, putting its own head completely into the wide-gaping mouth of the poisonous snake. The long fangs were just above the top of the mussurama’s head; and it appeared, as well as I could see, that they were once again driven into the mussurama ; but without the slightest effect. Then the fangs were curved back in the jaw, a fact which I particularly noted, and all effort at the offensive was abandoned by the poisonous snake. Meanwhile the mussurama was chewing hard, and gradually shifted its grip, little by little, until it got the top of the head of the jararaca in its mouth, the lower jaw of the jararaca being spread out to one side. The venomous serpent was helpless ; the fearsome master of the wild life of the forest, the deadly foe of humankind, was itself held in the grip of death. Its cold, baleful serpent’s eyes shone, as evil as ever. But it was dying. In vain it writhed and struggled. Nothing availed it. Once or twice the mussurama took a turn round the middle of the body of its opponent, but it did not seem to press hard, and apparently used its coils chiefly in order to get a better grip, so as to crush the head of its antagonist,-or to hold the latter in place. This crushing was done by its teeth; and the repeated bites were made with such effort that the muscles stood out on the mussurama’s neck. Then it took two coils round the neck of the jararaca, and proceeded deliberately to try to break the backbone of its opponent by twisting the head round. With this purpose it twisted its own 24 THE START [cHAP. I head and neck round so that the lighter - coloured surface was uppermost; and indeed at one time it looked as if it had made almost a complete single spiral revolution of its own body. It never for a moment relaxed its grip except to shift slightly the jaws. In a few minutes the jararaca was dead, its head crushed in, although the body continued to move con- vulsively. When satisfied that its opponent was dead, the mussurama began to try to get the head in its mouth. This was a process of some difficulty, on account of the angle at which the lower jaw of the jararaca stuck out. But finally the head was taken completely inside and then swallowed. After this, the mussurama proceeded deliberately, but with unbroken speed, to devour its opponent by the simple process of crawling outside it, the body and tail of the jararaca writhing and struggling until the last. During the early portion of the meal the mussurama put a stop to this writhing and struggling by resting its own body on that of its prey, but toward the last the part of the body that remained outside was left free to wriggle as it wished. Not only was the mussurama totally indifferent to our presence, but it was totally indifferent to being handled while the meal was going on. Several times I replaced the combatants in the middle of the table when they had writhed to the edge, and finally, when the photographers found that they could not get good pictures, I held the mussurama up against a white background with the partially swallowed snake in its mouth; and the feast went on uninterruptedly. I never saw cooler or more utterly unconcerned conduct ; and the ease and certainty with which the terrible poisonous snake was mastered gave me the heartiest respect and liking for the easy-going, good-natured, and The mussurama swallowing the jararaca, or fer-de-lance, after having just killed it From a photograph by Maza Method of the mussurama’s attack upon the jararaca Reproduced by courtesy of Dr. Vital Brazil OUR PARTY 25 exceedingly efficient serpent which I had been holding in my arms. Our trip was not intended as a hunting-trip, but as a scientific expedition. Before starting on the trip itself, while travelling in the Argentine, I received certain pieces of first-hand information concerning the natural history of the jaguar, and of the cougar, or puma, which are worth recording. The facts about the jaguar are not new in the sense of casting new light on its character, although they are interesting ; but the facts about the behaviour of the puma in one district of Patagonia are of great interest, because they give an entirely new side of its life-history. There was travelling with me at the time Doctor Francisco P. Moreno, of Buenos Aires. Doctor Moreno is at the present day a member of the National Board of Education of the Argentine, a man who has worked in every way for the benefit of his country, perhaps especially for the benefit of the children, so that when he was first introduced to me it was as the “ Jacob Riis of the Argentine”—for they know my deep and affectionate intimacy with Jacob Riis. He is also an eminent man of science, who has done admirable work as a geologist and a geographer. At one period, in connection with his duties as a boundary commissioner on the survey between Chile and the Argentine, he worked for years in Patagonia. It was he who made the extraordinary discovery in a Patagonian cave of the still fresh fragments of skin and other remains of the mylodon, the aberrant horse known as the onohipidium, the huge South American tiger, and the macrauchenia, all of them extinct animals. This discovery showed that some of the strange representatives of the giant 26 THE START [CHAP. I South American pleistocene fauna had lasted down to within a comparatively few thousand years, down to the time when man, substantially as the Spaniards found him, flourished on the continent. Incidentally the discovery tended to show that this fauna had lasted much later in South America than was the case with the corresponding faunas in other parts of the world; and therefore it tended to disprove the claims advanced by Doctor Ameghino for the extreme age, geologically, of this fauna, and for the extreme antiquity of man on the American continent. One day Doctor Moreno handed me a copy of The Outlook containing my account of a cougar-hunt in Arizona, saying that he noticed that I had very little faith in cougars attacking men, although I had explicitly stated that such attacks sometimes occurred. I told him, Yes, that I had found that the cougar was practically harmless to man, the undoubtedly authentic instances of attacks on men being so exceptional that they could in practice be wholly disregarded. Thereupon Doctor Moreno showed me a scar on his face, and told me that he had himself been attacked and badly mauled by a puma which was undoubtedly trying to prey on bim—that is, which had started on a career as a man- eater. This was to me most interesting. I had often met men who knew other men who had seen other men who said that they had been attacked by pumas, but this was the first time that I had ever come across a man who had himself been attacked. Doctor Moreno, as I have said, is not only an eminent citizen, but an eminent scientific man, and his account of what occurred is unquestionably a scientifically accurate statement of the facts. I give it exactly as the doctor told it; paraphrasing a letter he sent me, and including one or PUMAS AND COUGARS 27 two answers to questions I put to him. The doctor, by the way, stated to me that he had known Mr. Hudson, the author of the “ Naturalist in La Plata,” and that the latter knew nothing whatever of pumas from personal experience, and had accepted as facts utterly wild fables. Undoubtedly, said the doctor, the puma in South America, like the puma in North America, is as a general rule a cowardly animal which not only never attacks man, but rarely makes any efficient defence when attacked. The Indian and white hunters have no fear of it in most parts of the country, and its harmlessness to man is proverbial. But there is one particular spot in southern Patagonia where cougars, to the doctor’s own personal knowledge, have for years been dangerous foes of man. This curious local change in habits, by the way, is nothing unprecedented as regards wild animals. In portions of its range, as I am informed by Mr. Lord Smith, the Asiatic tiger can hardly be forced to fight man, and never preys on him, while throughout most of its range it is a most dangerous beast, and often turns man-eater. So there are waters in which sharks are habitual man-eaters, and others where they never touch men; and there are rivers and lakes where crocodiles or caymans are very dangerous, and others where they are practically harmless—I have myself seen this in Africa. In March, 1877, Doctor Moreno, with a party of men working on the boundary commission, and with a number of Patagonian horse-Indians, was encamped for some weeks beside Lake Viedma, which had not before been visited by white men for a century, and which was rarely visited even by Indians. One morning, just before sunrise, he left his camp by the south shore of 28 THE START [CHAP. I the lake, to make a topographical sketch of it. He was unarmed, but carried a prismatic compass in a leather case with a strap. It was cold, and he wrapped his poncho of guanaco-hide round his neck and head. He had walked a few hundred yards, when a puma, a female, sprang on him from behind and knocked him down. As she sprang on him she tried to seize his head with one paw, striking him on the shoulder with the other. She lacerated his mouth and also his back, but tumbled over with him, and in the scuffle they separated before she could bite him. He sprang to his feet, and, as he said, was forced to think quickly. She had recovered herself, and sat on her haunches like a cat, looking at him, and then crouched to spring again ; whereupon he whipped off his poncho, and as she sprang at him he opened it, and at the same moment hit her head with the prismatic compass in its case which he held by the strap. She struck the poncho, and was evidently puzzled by it, for, turning, she slunk off to one side, under a bush, and then proceeded to try to get round behind him. He faced her, keeping his eyes upon her, and backed off. She followed him for three or four hundred yards. At least twice she came up to attack him, but each him he opened his poncho and yelled, and at the last moment she shrank back. She continually, however, tried, by taking advantage of cover, to sneak up to one side, or behind, to attack him. Finally, when he got near camp, she abandoned the pursuit, and went into a small patch of bushes. He raised the alarm ; an Indian rode up and set fire to the bushes from the windward side. When the cougar broke from the bushes, the Indian rode after her, and threw his bolas, which twisted around her hind-legs ; and while she was struggling to free herself, he brained DR. MORENO’S ADVENTURES 29 her with his second bolas. The doctor’s injuries were rather painful, but not serious. Twenty-one years later, in April, 1898, he was camped on the same lake, but on the north shore, at the foot of a basaltic cliff’ He was in company with four soldiers, with whom he had travelled from the Strait of Magellan. In the night he was aroused by the shriek of a man and the barking of his dogs. As the men sprang up from where they were lying asleep, they saw a large puma run off out of the firelight into the darkness. It had sprung on a soldier named Marcelino Huquen while he was asleep, and had tried to carry him off. Fortunately, the man was so wrapped up in his blanket, as the night was cold, that he was not injured. The puma was never found or killed. About the same time a surveyor of Doctor Moreno’s party, a Swede named Arneberg, was attacked in similar fashion. The doctor was not with him at the time. Mr. Arneberg was asleep in the forest near Lake San Martin. The cougar both bit and clawed him, and tore his mouth, breaking out three teeth. The man was rescued ; but this puma also escaped. The doctor stated that in this particular locality the Indians, who elsewhere paid no heed whatever to the puma, never let their women go out after wood for fuel unless two or three were together. This was because on several occasions women who had gone out alone were killed by pumas. Evidently in this one locality the habit of at least occasional man-eating has become chronic with a species which elsewhere is the most cowardly, and to man the least dangerous, of all the big cats. These observations of Doctor Moreno have a peculiar value, because, as far as I know, they are the first trust- 30 THE START [cHAP. I worthy accounts of a cougar’s having attacked man save under circumstances so exceptional as to make the attack signify little more than the similar exceptional instances of attack by various other species of wild animals that are not normally dangerous to man. The jaguar, however, has long been known not only to be a dangerous foe when itself attacked, but also now and then to become a man-eater. Therefore the instances of such attacks furnished me are of merely corroborative value. In the excellent zoological gardens at Buenos Aires, the curator, Doctor Onelli, a naturalist of note, showed us a big male jaguar which had been trapped in the Chaco, where it had already begun a career as a man- eater, having killed three persons. They were killed, and two of them were eaten; the animal was trapped, in consequence of the alarm excited by the death of his third victim. This jaguar was very savage; whereas a young jaguar, which was in a cage with a young tiger, was playful and friendly, as was also the case with the young tiger. On my trip to visit La Plata Museum, I was accompanied by Captain Vicente Montes, of the Argentine Navy, an accomplished officer of scientific attainments. He had at one time been engaged on a survey of the boundary between the Argentine and Parana and Brazil. They had a quantity of dried beef in camp. On several occasions a jaguar came into camp after this dried beef. Finally they succeeded in protecting it so that he could not reach it. The result, however, was disastrous. On the next occasion that he visited camp, at midnight, he seized a man. Everybody was asleep at the time, and the jaguar came in so noise- lessly as to elude the vigilance of the dogs. As he seized the man, the latter gave one yell, but the next BIRDS 31 moment was killed, the jaguar driving his fangs through the man’s skull into the brain. There was a scene of uproar and confusion, and the jaguar was forced to drop his prey and flee into the woods. Next morning they followed him with the dogs, and finally killed him. He was a large male, in first-class condition. The only feature of note about these two incidents was that in each case the man-eater was a powerful animal in the prime of life; whereas it frequently happens that the jaguars that turn man-eaters are old animals, and have become too inactive or too feeble to catch their ordi- nary prey. During the two months before starting from Asuncion, in Paraguay, for our journey into the interior, I was kept so busy that I had scant time to think of natural history. But in a strange land a man who cares for wild birds and wild beasts always sees and hears some- thing that is new to him and interests him. In the dense tropical woods near Rio Janeiro I heard, in late October—springtime near the southern tropic—the songs of many birds that I could not identify. But the most beautiful music was from a shy woodland thrush, sombre-coloured, which lived near the ground in the thick timber, but sang high among the branches. At a great distance we could hear the ringing, musical, bell-like note, long-drawn and of piercing sweetness, which occurs at intervals in the song ; at first I thought this was the song, but when it was possible to approach the singer, I found that these far-sounding notes were scattered through a continuous song of great melody. I never listened to one that impressed me more. In different places in Argentina I heard and saw the Argentine mocking-bird, which is not very much unlike 32 THE START [cHAP. 1 our own, and is also a delightful and remarkable singer. But I never heard the wonderful white-banded mocking- bird, which is said by Hudson, who knew well the birds of both South America and Europe, to be the song-bird of them all. Most of the birds I thus noticed while hurriedly passing through the country were, of course, the con- spicuous ones. The spurred lapwings, big, tame, boldly marked plover, were everywhere ; they were very noisy and active, and both inquisitive and daring, and they have a very curious dance custom. No man need look for them. They will look for him, and when they find him they will fairly yell the discovery to the universe. In the marshes of the lower Parand I saw flocks of scarlet-headed blackbirds on the tops of the reeds; the females are as strikingly coloured as the males, and their jet-black bodies and brilliant red heads make it impos- sible for them to escape observation among their natural surroundings. On the plains to the west I saw flocks of the beautiful rose-breasted starlings; unlike the red- headed blackbirds, which seemed fairly to court attention, these starlings sought to escape observation by crouching on the ground, so that their red breasts were hidden. There were yellow-shouldered blackbirds in wet places, and cow-buntings abounded. But the most conspicuous birds I saw were members of the family of tyrant flycatchers, of which our own king-bird is the most familiar example. This family is very numerously represented in Argentina, both in species and individuals. Some of the species are so striking, both in colour and habits, and in one case also in shape, as to attract the attention of even the un- observant. The least conspicuous, and nevertheless very conspicuous, among those that I saw was the ARGENTINE BIRDS 33 bientevido, which is brown above, yellow beneath, with a boldly marked black and white head, and a yellow crest. It is very noisy, is common in the neighbourhood of houses, and builds a big domed nest. It is really a big, heavy king-bird, fiercer and more powerful than any northern king-bird. I saw them assail not only the big but the small hawks with fearlessness, driving them in headlong flight. They not only capture insects, but pounce on mice, small frogs, lizards, and little snakes, rob birds’-nests of the fledgling young, and catch tadpoles and even small fish. Two of the tyrants which I observed are like two with which I grew fairly familiar in Texas. -The scissor- tail is common throughout the open country, and the long tail feathers, which seem at times to hamper its flight, attract attention whether the bird is in flight or perched on a tree. It has a habit of occasionally soaring into the air and descending in loops and spirals. The scarlet tyrant I saw in the orchards and gardens. The male is a fascinating little bird, coal-black above, while his crested head and the body beneath are brilliant scarlet. He utters his rapid, low-voiced musical trill in the air, rising with fluttering wings to a height of a hundred feet, hovering while he sings, and then falling back to earth. The colour of the bird and the character of his performance attract the attention of every observer— bird, beast, or man—within reach of vision. The red-backed tyrant is utterly unlike any of his kind in the United States, and until I looked him up in Sclater and Hudson’s ornithology I never dreamed that he belonged to this family. He—for only the male is so brightly coloured—is coal-black with a dull red back. I saw these birds on December 1 near Barilloche, out on the bare Patagonian plains. They behaved like 3 34 THE START [cuar. I pipits or longspurs, running actively over the ground in the same manner, and showing the same restlessness and the same kind of flight. But whereas pipits are incon- spicuous, the red-backs at once attracted attention by the contrast between their bold colouring and the greyish or yellowish tones of the ground along which they ran. The silver-bill tyrant, however, is much more con- spicuous ; I saw it in the same neighbourhood as the red- back, and also in many other places. The male is jet black, with white bill and wings. He runs about on the ground like a pipit, but also frequently perches on some bush to go through a strange flight-song performance. He perches motionless, bolt upright, and even then his black colouring advertises him for a quarter of a mile round about. But every few minutes he springs up into the air to the height of twenty or thirty feet, the white wings flashing in contrast to the black body, screams and gyrates, and then instantly returns to his former post and resumes his erect pose of waiting. It is hard to imagine a more conspicuous bird than the silver-bill ; but the next and last tyrant flycatcher of which I shall speak possesses on the whole the most advertising coloration of any small bird I have ever seen in the open country, and, moreover, this advertising coloration exists in both sexes and throughout the year. It is a brilliant white all over, except the long wing quills and the ends of the tail feathers, which are black. The first one I saw, at a very long distance, I thought must be an albino. It perches on the top of a bush or tree, watching for its prey, and it shines in the sun like a silver mirror. Every hawk, cat, or man must see it; no one can help seeing it. These common Argentine birds, most of them of the open country, and all of them with a strikingly ad- COLORATION AND HABITS OF BIRDS 35 vertising coloration, are interesting because of their beauty and their habits. They are also interesting because they offer such illuminating examples of the truth that many of the most common and successful birds not merely lack a concealing coloration, but possess a coloration which is in the highest degree revealing. ‘The coloration and the habits of most of these birds are such that every hawk or other foe that can see at all must have its attention attracted to them. Evidently in their cases neither the coloration nor any habit of concealment based on the coloration is a sur- vival factor, and this although they live in a land teeming with bird-eating hawks. Among the higher vertebrates there are many known factors which have influence— some in one set of cases, some in another set of cases—in the development and preservation of species. Courage, intelligence, adaptability, prowess, bodily vigour, speed, alertness, ability to hide, ability to build structures which will protect the young while they are helpless, fecundity —all, and many more like them, have their several places; and behind all these visible causes there are at work other and often more potent causes of which as yet science can say nothing. Some species owe much to a given attri- bute which may be wholly lacking in influence on other species ; and every one of the attributes above enumer- ated is a survival factor in some species, while in others it has no survival value whatever, and in yet others, although of benefit, it is not of sufficient benefit to offset the benefit conferred on foes or rivals by totally different attributes. Intelligence, for instance, is of course a sur- vival factor; but to-day there exist multitudes of animals with very little intelligence which have persisted through immense periods of geologic time either unchanged or else without any change in the direction of increased 36 THE START [cHAP. I intelligence; and during their species-life they have witnessed the death of countless other species of far greater intelligence, but in other ways less adapted to succeed in the environmental complex. ‘The same state- ment can be made of all the many, many other known factors in development, from fecundity to concealing coloration; and behind them lie forces as to which we veil our ignorance by the use of high-sounding nomen- clature—as when we use such a convenient but far from satisfactory term as “ orthogenesis.” CHAPTER II UP THE PARAGUAY On the afternoon of December 9 we left the attrac- tive and picturesque city of Asuncion to ascend the Paraguay. With generous courtesy the Paraguayan Government had put at my disposal the gunboat-yacht of the President himself, a most comfortable river steamer, and so the opening days of our trip were pleasant in every way. The food was good, our quarters. were clean, we slept well below or on deck, usually without our mosquito-nettings, and in daytime the deck was pleasant under the awnings. It was hot, of course, but we were dressed suitably in our exploring and hunting clothes, and did not mind the heat. The river was low, for there had been dry weather for some weeks—judging from the vague and contradictory information I received there is much elasticity to the terms “wet season” and “ dry season ” at this part of the Paraguay. Under the brilliant sky we steamed steadily up the mighty river; the sunset was glorious as we leaned on the port railing ; and after nightfall the moon, nearly full and hanging high in the heavens, turned the water to shimmering radiance. On the mud-flats and sand-bars, and among the green rushes of the bays and inlets, were stately water-fowl; crimson flamingoes and rosy spoonbills, dark-coloured ibis, and white storks 37 38 UP THE PARAGUAY [cHaP. II with black wings. Darters, with snake-like necks and pointed bills, perched in the trees on the brink of the river. Snowy egrets flapped across the marshes. Cay- mans were common, and differed from the crocodiles we had seen in Africa in two points: they were not alarmed by the report of a rifle when fired at, and they lay with the head raised instead of stretched along the sand. For three days, as we steamed northward toward the Tropic of Capricorn, and then passed it, we were within the Republic of Paraguay. On our right, to the east, there was a fairly well settled country, where bananas and oranges were cultivated and other crops of hot countries raised. On the banks we passed an occasional small town, or saw a ranch-house close to the river’s brink, or stopped for wood at some little settlement. Across the river to the west lay the level, swampy, fertile wastes known as the Chaco, still given over either to the wild Indians or to cattle-ranching on a gigantic scale. The broad river ran in curves between mud-banks, where terraces marked successive periods of flood. A belt of forest stood on each bank, but it was only a couple of hundred yards wide. Back of it was the open country; on the Chaco side this was a vast plain of grass dotted with tall, graceful palms. In places the belt of forest vanished and the palm-dotted prairie came to the river’s edge. The Chaco is an ideal cattle country, and not really unhealthy. It will be covered with ranches at a not distant day. But mos- quitoes and many other winged insect pests swarm over it. Cherrie and Miller had spent a week there collect- ing mammals and birds prior to my arrival at Asuncion. They were veterans of the tropics, hardened to the insect plagues of Guiana and the Orinoco. But they INSECT PESTS 39 reported that never had they been so tortured as in the Chaco. The sand-flies crawled through the meshes in the mosquito-nets, and forbade them to sleep; if in their sleep a knee touched the net the mosquitoes fell on it so that it looked as if riddled by bird-shot ; and the nights were a torment, although they had done well in their work, collecting some two hundred and fifty specimens of birds and mammals. Nevertheless, for some as yet inscrutable reason the river served as a barrier to certain insects which are menaces to the cattlemen. With me on the gunboat was an old Western friend, Tex Rickard, of the Pan- handle and Alaska and various places in between. He now has a large tract of land and some thirty-five thousand head of cattle in the Chaco, opposite Con- cepcion, at which city he was to stop. He told me that horses did not do well in the Chaco, but that cattle throve, and that, while ticks swarmed on the east bank of the great river, they would not live on the west bank. Again and again he had crossed herds of cattle which were covered with the loathsome bloodsuckers ; and in a couple of months every tick would be dead. The worst animal foes of man, indeed the only dangerous foes, are insects; and this is especially true in the tropics. Fortunately, exactly as certain differences, too minute for us as yet to explain, render some insects deadly to man or domestic animals, while closely allied forms are harmless, so, for other reasons, which also we are not as yet able to fathom, these insects are for the most part strictly limited by geographical and other considerations. The war against what Sir Harry Johnston calls the really material devil, the devil of evil wild nature in the tropics, has been waged with marked success only during the last two decades. The 40 UP THE PARAGUAY [CHAP. II men, in the United States, in England, France, Ger- many, Italy—the men like Doctor Cruz in Rio Janeiro and Doctor Vital Brazil in Sao Paulo—who work ex- perimentally within and without the laboratory in their warfare against the disease and death bearing insects and microbes, are the true leaders in the fight to make the tropics the home of civilized man. Late on the evening of the second day of our trip, just before midnight, we reached Concepcion. On this day, when we stopped for wood or to get provisions—at picturesque places, where the women from rough mud and thatched cabins were washing clothes in the river, or where ragged horsemen stood gazing at us from the bank, or where dark, well-dressed ranchmen stood in front of red-roofed houses—we caught many fish. They belonged to one of the most formidable genera of fish in the world, the piranha, or cannibal fish, the fish that eats men when it can get the chance. Farther north there are species of small piranha that go in schools. At this point on the Paraguay the piranha do not seem to go in regular schools, but they swarm in all the waters, and attain a length of eighteen inches or over. They are the most ferocious fish in the world. Even the most formidable fish, the sharks, or the barracudas, usually attack things smaller than themselves. But the piranhas habitually attack things much larger than themselves. They will snap a finger off a hand incautiously trailed in the water; they mutilate swimmers—in every river town in Paraguay there are men who have been thus mutilated ; they will rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness. They will tear wounded wild fowl to pieces, . and bite off the tails of big fish as they grow exhausted when fighting after being hooked. Miller, before I Man-eating fish, piranha Note the razor-edged teeth From photographs by Harper THE BLOODTHIRSTY PIRANHA 41 reached Asuncion, had been badly bitten by one. Those that we caught sometimes bit through the hooks, or the double strands of copper wire that served as leaders, and got away. Those that we hauled on deck lived for many minutes. Most predatory fish are long and slim, like the alligator-gar and pickerel. But the piranha is a short, deep-bodied fish, with a blunt face and a heavily under-shot or projecting lower jaw which gapes widely. The razor-edged teeth are wedge-shaped like a shark’s, and the jaw muscles possess great power. The rabid, furious snaps drive the teeth through flesh and bone. The head, with its short muzzle, staring malignant eyes, and gaping, cruelly armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ferocity ; and the actions of the fish exactly match its looks. I never witnessed an exhibition of such impotent, savage fury as was shown by the piranhas as they flapped on deck. When fresh from the water and thrown on the boards they uttered an extraordinary squealing sound. As they flapped about they bit with vicious eagerness at whatever presented itself. One of them flapped into a cloth and seized it with a bulldog grip. Another grasped one of his fellows ; another snapped at a piece of wood, and left the teeth-marks deep therein. They are the pests of the waters, and it is necessary to be exceedingly cautious about either swimming or wading where they are found. If cattle are driven into, or of their own accord enter, the water, they are commonly not molested ; but if by chance some unusually big or ferocious specimen of these fearsome fishes does bite an animal—taking off part of an ear, or perhaps of a teat from the udder of a cow—the blood brings up every member of the ravenous throng which is anywhere near, and unless the attacked animal can immediately make its escape from 42 UP THE PARAGUAY [CHAP. II the water it is devoured alive. Here on the Paraguay the natives hold them in much respect, whereas the caymans are not feared at all. The only redeeming feature about them is that they are themselves fairly good to eat, although with too many bones. _ At daybreak of the third day, finding we were still moored off Concepcion, we were rowed ashore, and strolled off through the streets of the quaint, picturesque old town ; a town which, like Asuncion, was founded by the conquiscadores three-quarters of a century before our own English and Dutch forefathers landed in what is now the United States. The Jesuits then took prac- tically complete possession of what is now Paraguay, controlling and Christianizing the Indians, and raising their flourishing missions to a pitch of prosperity they never elsewhere achieved. ‘They were expelled by the civil authorities (backed by the other representatives of ecclesiastical authority) some fifty years before Spanish South America became independent. But they had already made the language of the Indians, Guarany, a culture-tongue, reducing it to writing, and printing religious books in it. Guarany is one of the most wide- spread of the Indian tongues, being originally found in various closely allied forms, not only in Paraguay, but in Uruguay and over the major part of Brazil. It remains here and there, as a lingua geral at least, and doubtless in cases as an original tongue, among the wild tribes. In most of Brazil, as around Para and around Sao Paulo, it has left its traces in place-names, but has been completely superseded as a language by Por- tuguese. In Paraguay it still exists side by side with Spanish as the common language of the lower people and as a familiar tongue among the upper classes. The blood of the people is mixed, their language dual ; the THE INHABITANTS OF THE CHACO 43 lower classes are chiefly of Indian blood, but with a white admixture; while the upper classes are pre- dominantly white, with a strong infusion of Indian. There is no other case quite parallel to this in the annals of European colonization, although the Goanese in India have a native tongue and a Portuguese creed, while in several of the Spanish-American states the Indian blood is dominant, and the majority of the popu- lation speak an Indian tongue, perhaps itself, as with the Quichuas, once a culture-tongue of the archaic type. Whether in Paraguay one tongue will ultimately drive out the other, and, if so, which will be the victor, it is yet too early to prophesy. The English missionaries and the Bible Society have recently published parts of the Scriptures in Guarany ; and in Asuncion a daily paper is published with the text in parallel columns— Spanish and Guarany—just as in Oklahoma there is a similar paper published in English and in the tongue which the extraordinary Cherokee chief Sequoia, a veritable Cadmus, made a literary language. The Guarany-speaking Paraguayan is a Christian, and as much an inheritor of our common culture as most of the peasant populations of Europe. He has no kinship with the wild Indian, who hates and fears him. The Indian of the Chaco, a pure savage, a bow-bearing savage, will never come east of the Paraguay, and the Paraguayan is only beginning to venture into the western interior, away from the banks of the river— under the lead of pioneer settlers like Rickard, whom, by the way, the wild Indians thoroughly trust, and for whom they work eagerly and faithfully. There is a great development ahead for Paraguay, as soon as they can definitely shake off the revolutionary habit and establish an orderly permanence of government. The 44 UP THE PARAGUAY [cHaP. II people are a fine people; the strains of blood—white and Indian—are good. We walked up the streets of Concepcion, and inter- estedly looked at everything of interest: at the one- story houses, their windows covered with gratings of fretted ironwork, and their occasional open doors giving us glimpses into cool inner courtyards, with trees and flowers; at the two-wheel carts, drawn by mules or oxen ; at an occasional rider, with spurs on his bare feet, and his big toes thrust into the small stirrup-rings ; at the little stores, and the warehouses for matté and hides. Then we came to a pleasant little inn, kept by a Frenchman and his wife, of old Spanish style, with its patio, or inner court, but as neat as an innin Normandy or Brittany. We were sitting at coffee, around a little table, when in came the Colonel of the garrison—for Concepcion is the second city in Paraguay. He told me that they had prepared a reception forme! I was in my rough hunting-clothes, but there was nothing to do but to accompany my kind hosts and trust to their good nature to pardon my shortcomings in the matter of dress. The Colonel drove me about in a smart open carriage, with two good horses and a liveried driver. It was a much more fashionable turnout than would be seen in any of our cities save the largest, and even in them probably not in the service of a public official. In all the South American countries there is more pomp and ceremony in connection with public functions than with us, and at these functions the liveried servants, often with knee-breeches and powdered hair, are like those seen at similar European functions ; there is not the democratic simplicity which better suits our own habits of life and ways of thought. But the South Americans often surpass us, not merely in pomp and CONCEPCION 45 ceremony, but in what is of real importance, courtesy ; in civility and courtesy we can well afford to take lessons from them. We first visited the barracks, saw the troops in the setting-up exercises, and inspected the arms, the artillery, the equipment. There was a German Lieu- tenant with the Paraguayan officers; one of several German officers who are now engaged in helping the Paraguayans with their army. The equipments and arms were in good condition ; the enlisted men evidently offered fine material; and the officers were doing hard work. It is worth while for anti-militarists to ponder the fact that, in every South American country where a really efficient army is developed, the increase in military efficiency goes hand in hand with a decrease in lawlessness and disorder, and a growing reluctance to settle internal disagreements by violence. They are introducing universal military service in Paraguay ; the officers, many of whom have studied abroad, are growing to feel an increased esprit de corps, an increased pride in the army, and therefore a desire to see the army made the servant of the nation as a whole, and not the tool of any faction or individual. If these feelings grow strong enough, they will be powerful factors in giving Paraguay what she most needs, free- dom from revolutionary disturbance, and therefore the chance to achieve the material prosperity without which as a basis there can be no advance in other and even more important matters. Then I was driven to the City Hall, accompanied by the intendente, or mayor, a German long settled in the country, and one of the leading men of the city. There was a breakfast. When I had to speak I impressed into my service as interpreter a young Paraguayan, who was 46 UP THE PARAGUAY (CHAP. II a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He was able to render into Spanish my ideas—on such subjects as orderly liberty and the far-reaching mischief done by the revolutionary habit —with clearness and vigour, because he thoroughly understood not only how I felt, but also the American way of looking at such things. My hosts were hospitality itself, and I enjoyed the unexpected greeting. We steamed on up the river. Now and then we passed another boat—a steamer, or, to my surprise, perhaps a barkentine or schooner. The Paraguay is a highway of traffic. Once we passed a big beef- canning factory. Ranches stood on either bank a few leagues apart, and we stopped at wood-yards on the west bank. Indians worked around them. At one such yard the Indians were evidently part of the regular force. Their squaws were with them, cooking at queer open-air ovens. One small child had as pets a parrot and a young coati—a kind of long-nosed raccoon. Loading wood, the Indians stood in a line, tossing the logs from one to the other. These Indians wore clothes. On this day we got into the tropics. Even in the heat of the day the deck was pleasant under the awnings; the sun rose and set in crimson splendour ; and the nights, with the moon at the full, were wonder- ful. At night Orion blazed overhead, and the Southern Cross hung in the star-brilliant heavens behind us. But after the moon rose the constellations paled, and clear in her light the tree-clad banks stood on either hand as we steamed steadily against the swirling current of the great river. At noon on the 12th we were at the Brazilian boundary. On this day we here and there came on yonasooy prusay &q sydvascqoyd wos yoayvied pur qod-3uryoos iv [418 uvIpuy yoljso Sunod YUM [413 1dny, (TewtUY axI]-UCCD) YvOD YA Aog UeIpUT IN BRAZIL 47 low, conical hills close to the river. In places the palm- groves broke through the belts of deciduous trees, and stretched for a mile or so right along the river’s bank. At times we passed cattle on the banks or sand-bars, followed by their herders; or a handsome ranch-house, under a cluster of shady trees, some bearing’a wealth of red and some a wealth of yellow blossoms ; or we saw a horse-corral among the trees close to the brink, with the horses in it, and a barefooted man in shirt and trousers leaning against the fence; or a herd of cattle among the palms; or a big tannery or factory, or a little native hamlet came in sight. We stopped at one tannery. The owner was a Spaniard, the manager an “Oriental,” as he called himself, a Uruguayan, of German parentage. The peons, or workers, who lived in a long line of wooden cabins back of the main build- ing, were mostly Paraguayans, with a few Brazilians, and a dozen German and Argentine foremen. There were also some wild Indians, who were camped in the usual squalid fashion of Indians who are hangers-on round the white man, but have not yet adopted his ways. Most of the men were at work cutting wood for the tannery. The women and children were in camp. Some individuals of both sexes were naked to the waist. One little girl had a young ostrich as a pet. Water-fowl were plentiful. We saw large flocks of wild muscovy ducks. Our tame birds come from this wild species, and its absurd misnaming dates back to the period when the turkey and the guinea-pig were mis- named in similar fashion—our European forefathers taking a large and hazy view of geography, and in- cluding Turkey, Guinea, India, and Muscovy as places which, in their capacity of being outlandish, could be comprehensively used as including America. The mus- 48 UP THE PARAGUAY [CHAP. II covy ducks were very good eating. Darters and cormorants swarmed. They waddled on the sand-bars in big flocks, and crowded the trees by the water’s edge. Beautiful snow-white egrets also lit in the trees, often well back from the river. A full-foliaged tree of vivid green, its round surface crowded with these birds, as if it had suddenly blossomed with huge white flowers, is a sight worth seeing. Here and there on the sand-bars we saw huge jabiru storks, and once a flock of white wood-ibis among the trees on the bank. On the Brazilian boundary we met a shallow river steamer carrying Colonel Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon and several other Brazilian members of the expedition. Colonel Rondon immediately showed that he was all, and more than all, that could be desired. It was evident that he knew his business thoroughly, and it was edually evident that he would be a pleasant companion. / He was a classmate of Mr. Lauro Miller at the Brazilian Military Academy. He is of almost pure Indian blood, and is a Positivist—the Positivists are a really strong body in Brazil, as they are in France and, indeed, in Chile. The Colonel’s seven children have all been formally made members of the Positivist Church in Rio Janeiro. Brazil possesses the same complete liberty in matters religious, spiritual, and intellectual as we, for our great good fortune, do in the United States, and my Brazilian companions included Catholics and equally sincere men who described them- selves as “libres penseurs.” Colonel Rondon has spent the last twenty-four years in exploring the western highlands of Brazil, pioneering the way for telegraph- Imes and railroads. During that time he has travelled some fourteen thousand miles, on territory most of which had not previously been traversed by Indians rolling logs at wood station From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt Palms along the bank of the river From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt COLONEL RONDON 49 civilized man, and has built three thousand miles of telegraph. He has an exceptional knowledge of the Indian tribes, and has always zealously endeavoured to serve them, and indeed to serve the cause of humanity, wherever and whenever he was able. Thanks mainly to his efforts, four of the wild tribes of the region he has explored have begun to tread the road of civilization. They have taken the first steps toward becoming Christians. It may seem strange that among the first- fruits of the efforts of a Positivist should be the conver- sion to Christianity of those he seeks to benefit. But in South America, Christianity is at least as much a status asa theology. It represents the indispensable first step upward from savagery. In the wilder and poorer districts men are divided into the two great classes of “ Christians ” and “ Indians.” When an Indian becomes a Christian he is accepted into, and becomes wholly absorbed or partly assimilated by, the crude and simple neighbouring civilization, and then he moves up or down like anyone else among his fellows. Among Colonel Rondon’s companions were Captain Amilcar de Magalhies, Lieutenent Joao Lyra, Lieu- tenant Joaquin de Mello Filho, and Doctor Euzebio de Oliveira, a geologist. The steamers halted ; Colonel Rondon and several of his officers, spick and span in their white uniforms, came aboard ; and in the afternoon I visited him on his steamer to talk over our plans. When these had been fully discussed and agreed on, we took tea. I happened to mention that one of our naturalists, Miller, had been bitten by a piranha, and the man-eating fish at once became the subject of conversation. Curiously enough, one of the Brazilian taxidermists had also just been severely bitten by a piranha. My new companions had 4 50 UP THE PARAGUAY [cHaP. II story after story to tell of them. Only three weeks previously a twelve-year-old boy who had gone in swimming near Corumbé was attacked, and literally devoured alive by them. Colonel Rondon during his exploring trips had met with more than one unpleasant experience in connection with them. He had lost one of his toes by the bite of a piranha. He was about to bathe, and had chosen a shallow pool at the edge of the river, which he carefully inspected until he was satisfied that none of the man-eating fish were in it; yet as soon as he put his foot into the water one of them attacked him and bit off a toe. On another occasion, while wading across a narrow stream, one of his party was attacked ; the fish bit him on the thighs and buttocks, and, when he put down his hands, tore them also; he was near the bank, and by a rush reached it and swung himself out of the water by means of an overhanging limb of a tree ; but he was terribly injured, and it took him six months before his wounds healed and he recovered. An extraordinary incident occurred on another trip. The party were without food and very hungry. On reaching a stream they dynamited it, and waded in to seize the stunned fish as they floated on the surface. One man, Lieutenant Pyrineus, having his hands full, tried to hold one fish by putting its head into his mouth ; it was a piranha, and seemingly stunned, but in a moment it recovered, and bit a big section out of his tongue. Such a hemorrhage followed that his life was saved with the utmost difficulty. On another occasion a member of the party was off by himself on amule. The mule came into camp alone. Following his track back, they came to a ford, where in the water they found the skeleton of the dead man, his clothes uninjured, but every particle of flesh stripped from his DANGERS OF THE PIRANHA 51 bones. Whether he had been drowned, and the fishes had then eaten his body, or whether they had killed him, it was impossible to say. They had not hurt the clothes, getting in under them, which made it seem likely that there had been no struggle. These man-eating fish are a veritable scourge in the waters they frequent. But it must not be understood by this that the piranhas—or, for the matter of that, the New World caymans and crocodiles—ever become such dreaded foes of man as, for instance, the man-eating crocodiles of Africa. Accidents occur, and there are certain places where swimming and bathing are dangerous ; but in most places the people swim freely, although they are usually careful to find spots they believe safe, or else to keep together and make a splashing in the water. During his trips Colonel Rondon had met with various experiences with wild creatures. The Paraguayan caymans are not ordinarily dangerous to man; but they do sometimes become man-eaters, and should be destroyed whenever the opportunity offers. The huge caymans and crocodiles of the Amazon are far more dangerous, and the Colonel knew of repeated instances where men, women, and children had become their victims. Once, while dynamiting a stream for fish for his starving party, he partially stunned a giant anaconda, which he killed as it crept slowly off. He said that it was of a size that no other anaconda he had ever seen even approached, and that in his opinion such a brute, if hungry, would readily attack a full-grown man. Twice smaller anacondas had attacked his dogs; one was carried under water—for the anaconda is a water-loving serpent—but he rescued it. One of his men was bitten by a jararaca ; he killed the venomous snake, but was not discovered and brought back to camp until it was too 52 UP THE PARAGUAY [cHapP. II late to save his life. The puma Colonel Rondon had found to be as cowardly as I have always found it, but the jaguar was a formidable beast, which occasionally turned man-eater, and often charged savagely when brought to bay. He had known a hunter to be killed by a jaguar he was following in thick grass cover. All such enemies, however, he regarded as utterly trivial compared to the real dangers of the wilderness— the torment and menace of attacks by the swarming insects, by mosquitoes and the even more intolerable tiny gnats, by the ticks, and by the vicious poisonous ants which occasionally cause villages, and even whole districts, to be deserted by human beings. These insects, and the fevers they cause, and dysentery and starvation and wearing hardship and accidents in rapids, are what the pioneer explorers have to fear. The conversation was to me most interesting. The Colonel spoke French about to the extent I did; but, of course, he and the others preferred Portuguese ; and then Kermit was the interpreter. — In the evening, soon after moonrise, we stopped for wood at the little Brazilian town of Porto Martinho. There are about twelve hundred inhabitants. Some of the buildings were of stone ; a large private house with a castellated tower was of stone; there were shops, and a post-office, stores, a restaurant and billiard-hall, and warehouses for matté, of which much is grown in the region roundabout. Most of the houses were low, with overhanging, sloping eaves; and there were gardens with high walls, inside of which trees rose, many of them fragrant. We wandered through the wide, dusty streets, and along the narrow sidewalks. It was a hot, still evening ; the smell of the tropics was on the heavy December air. Through the open doors and windows PORTO MARTINHO 53 we caught dim glimpses of the half-clad inmates of the poorer houses ; women and young girls sat outside their thresholds in the moonlight. All whom we met were most friendly: the Captain of the little Brazilian garrison; the intendente, a local trader ; another trader and ranch- man, a Uruguayan, who had just received his newspaper containing my speech in Montevideo, and who, as I gathered from what I understood of his rather voluble Spanish, was much impressed by my views on democracy, honesty, liberty, and order (rather well-worn topics) ; and a Catalan who spoke French, and who was accompanied by his pretty daughter, a dear little girl of eight or ten, who said with much pride that she spoke three languages —Brazilian, Spanish, and Catalan! Her father expressed strongly his desire for a church and for a school in the little city. When at last the wood was aboard we resumed our journey. The river was like glass. In the white moon- light the palms on the edge of the banks stood mirrored in the still water. We sat forward, and as we rounded the curves the long silver reaches of the great stream stretched ahead of us, and the ghostly outlines of hills rose in the distance. Here and there prairie fires burned, and the red glow warred with the moon’s radiance. Next morning was overcast. Occasionally we passed a wood-yard, or factory, or cabin, now on the eastern, the Brazilian, now on the western, the Paraguayan, bank. The Paraguay was known to men of European birth, bore soldiers and priests and merchants as they sailed and rowed up and down the current of its stream, and beheld little towns and forts rise on its banks, long before the Mississippi had become the white man’s highway. Now, along its upper course, the settlements are much like those on the Mississippi at the end of the 54 UP THE PARAGUAY [CHAP. II first quarter of the last century ; and in the not distant future it will witness a burst of growth and prosperity much like that which the Mississippi saw when the old men of to-day were very young. In the early forenoon we stopped : at a little Paraguayan hamlet, nestling in the green growth under a group of low hills by the river-brink. On one of these hills stood a picturesque old stone fort, known as Fort Bourbon in the Spanish, the colonial, days. Now the Paraguayan flag floats over it, and it is garrisoned by a handful of Paraguayan soldiers. Here Father Zahm baptized two children, the youngest of a large family of fair-skinned, light-haired small people, whose father was a Paraguayan and the mother an “ Oriental,” or Uruguayan. No priest had visited the village for three years, and the children were respectively one and two years of age. The sponsors included the local commandante and a married couple from Austria. In answer to what was supposed to be the perfunctory question whether they were Catholics, the parents returned the unexpected answer that they were not. Further questioning elicited the fact that the father called himself a “ free-thinking Catholic,” and the mother said she was a “ Protestant Catholic,” her mother having been a Protestant, the daughter of an immigrant from Normandy. However, it appeared that the older children had been baptized by the Bishop of Asuncion, so Father Zahm, at the earnest request of the parents, proceeded with the ceremony. They were good people; and, although they wished liberty to think exactly as they individually pleased, they also wished to be connected and to have their children connected with some Church, by preference the Church of the majority of their people. A very short experience of communities where there is no Church ought to con- CHRISTIAN CHURCHES IN S. AMERICA 55 vince the most heterodox of the absolute need of a Church. I earnestly wish that there could be such an increase in the personnel and equipment of the Roman Catholic Church in South America as to permit the establishment of one good and earnest priest in every village or little community in the far interior. Nor is there any inconsistency between this wish and the further wish that there could be a marked extension and develop- ment of the native Protestant Churches, such as I saw established here and there in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, and of the YM.C. Associations. Most of the good people who profess religion will con- tinue to be Roman Catholic, but the spiritual needs of a more or less considerable minority will best be met by the establishment of Protestant Churches, or in places even of a Positivist Church or Ethical Culture Society. Not only is the establishment of such Churches a good thing for the body politic as a whole, but a good thing for the Catholic Church itself; for their presence is a constant spur to activity and clean and honourable conduct, and a constant reflection on sloth and moral laxity. The government in each of these common- wealths is doing everything possible to further the cause of education, and the tendency is to treat education as peculiarly a function of government, and to make it, where the government acts, non-sectarian, obligatory, and free—a cardinal doctrine of our own great democracy, to which we are committed by every principle of sound Americanism. There must be abso- lute religious liberty, for tyranny and intolerance are as abhorrent in matters intellectual and spiritual as in matters political and material; and more and more we must all realize that conduct is of infinitely greater importance than dogma. But no democracy can afford 56 UP THE PARAGUAY [cHaP. II to’ overlook the vital importance of the ethical and spiritual, the truly religious, element in life; and in practice the average good man grows clearly to under- stand this, and to express the need in concrete form by saying that no community can make much headway if it does not contain both a church and a school. “We took breakfast—the eleven o’clock Brazilian breakfast—on Colonel Rondon’s boat. Caymans were becoming more plentiful. The ugly brutes lay on the sand-flats and mud-banks like logs, always with the head raised, sometimes with the jaws open. They are often dangerous to domestic animals, and are always destructive to fish, and it is good to shoot them. I killed half a dozen, and missed nearly as many more—a throbbing boat does not improve one’s aim. We passed forests of palms that extended for leagues, and vast marshy meadows, where storks, herons, and ibis were gathered, with flocks of cormorants and darters on the sand-bars, and stilts, skimmers, and clouds of beautiful swaying terns in the foreground. About noon we passed the highest point which the old Spanish con- quistadores and explorers, Irala and Ayolas, had reached in the course of their marvellous journeys in the first half of the sixteenth century—at a time when there was not a settlement in what is now the United States, and when hardly a single English sea-captain had ventured so much as to cross the Atlantic. By the following day the country on the east bank had become a vast marshy plain, dotted here and there by tree-clad patches of higher land. The morning was rainy—a contrast to the fine weather we had hitherto encountered. We passed wood-yards and cattle-ranches. At one of the latter the owner, an Argentine of Irish parentage, who still spoke English with the accent of qoaasooy prusay &q y¢visojoys v wory JoATy Avnsevivg saddn ayy uo aed COIMBRA ‘57 the land of his parents’ nativity, remarked that this was the first time the American flag had been seen on the upper Paraguay, for our gunboat carried it at the mast- head. Early in the afternoon, having reached the part where both banks of the river were Brazilian territory, we came to the old colonial Portuguese fort of Coimbra. It stands where two steep hills rise, one on either side of the river, and it guards the water-gorge between them. It was captured by the Paraguayans in the war of nearly half a century ago. Some modern guns have been mounted, and there is a garrison of Brazilian troops. The white fort is perched on the hillside, where it clings and rises, terrace above terrace, with bastion and parapet and crenellated wall. At the foot of the hill, on the riverine plain, stretches the old-time village with its roofs of palm. In the village dwell several hundred souls, almost entirely the officers and soldiers and their families. There is one long street. The one-story, daub-and-wattle houses have low eaves, and steep sloping roofs of palm-leaves or of split palm- trunks. Under one or two old but small trees there are rude benches, and for a part of the length of the street there is a rough stone sidewalk. A little graveyard, some of the tombs very old, stands at one end. As we passed down the street, the wives and the swarming children of the garrison were at the doors and windows ; there were women and girls with skins as fair as any in the northland, and others that were pre- dominantly negro. Most were of intervening shades. All this was paralleled among the men, and the fusion of the colours was going on steadily. Around the village black vultures were gathered. Not long before reaching it we passed some rounded green trees, their tops covered with the showy wood- 58 UP THE PARAGUAY [cHAP. II ibis ; at the same time we saw behind them, farther inland, other trees crowded with the more delicate forms of the shining white egrets. The river now widened, so that in places it looked like a long lake; it wound in every direction through the endless marshy plain, whose surface was broken here and there by low mountains. The splendour of the sunset I never saw surpassed. We were steaming east toward clouds of storm. The river ran, a broad highway of molten gold, into the flaming sky ; the far- off mountains loomed purple across the marshes ; belts of rich green, the river-banks stood out on either side against the rose hues of the rippling water ; in front, as we forged steadily onward, hung the tropic night, dim and vast. On December 15 we reached Corumbaé. For three or four miles before it is reached, the west bank, on which it stands, becomes high rocky ground, falling away into cliffs. The country round about was evi- dently well peopled. We saw gauchos, cattle-herders— the equivalent of our own cowboys—riding along the bank. Women were washing clothes, and their naked children bathing on the shore—we were told that cay- mans and piranhas rarely ventured near a place where so much was going on, and that accidents generally occurred in ponds or lonely stretches of the river. Several steamers came out to meet us, and accom- panied us for a dozen miles, with bands playing and the passengers cheering, just as if we were nearing some town on the Hudson. Corumba is on a steep hillside, with wide, roughly- paved streets, some of them lined with beautiful trees that bear scarlet flowers, and with well-built houses, most of them of one story, some of two or three stories. CORUMBA 59 We were greeted with a reception by the municipal council, and were given a state dinner. The hotel, kept by an Italian, was as comfortable as possible— stone floors, high ceilings, big windows and doors, a cool, open courtyard, and a shower-bath. Of course, Corumbé is still a frontier town. The vehicles are ox- carts and mule-carts ; there are no carriages ; and oxen as well as mules are used for riding. The water comes from a big central well; around it the water-carts gather, and their contents are then peddled around at the different houses. The families showed the mixture of races characteristic of Brazil; one mother, after the children had been photographed in their ordinary cos- tume, begged that we return and take them in their Sunday clothes, which was accordingly done. In a year the railway from Rio will reach Corumbé, and then this city, and the country round about, will see much development. At this point we rejoined the rest of the party, and very glad we were to see them. Cherrie and Miller had already collected some eight hundred specimens of mammals and birds. CHAPTER III A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY THE morning after our arrival at Corumba I asked Colonel Rondon to inspect our outfit ; for his experience of what is necessary in tropical travelling has been gained through a quarter of a century of arduous exploration in the wilderness. It was Fiala who had assembled our food-tents, cooking utensils, and supplies of all kinds, and he and Sigg, during their stay in Corumba, had been putting everything in shape for our start. Colonel Rondon, at the end of his inspection, said he had nothing whatever to suggest; that it was extraordinary that Fiala, without personal know- ledge of the tropics, could have gathered the things most necessary, with the minimum of bulk and maximum of usefulness. Miller had made a special study of the piranhas, which swarmed at one of the camps he and Cherrie had made in the Chaco. So numerous were they that the members of the party had to be exceedingly careful in dipping up water. Miller did not find that they were cannibals toward their own kind; they were “cannibals” only in the sense of eating the flesh of men. When dead piranhas, and even when mortally injured piranhas, with the blood flowing, were thrown among the ravenous living, they were left unmolested. 60 cHaP. 11.] HABITS OF THE PIRANHA 61 Moreover, it was Miller’s experience, the direct con- trary of what we had been told, that splashing and a commotion in the water attracted the piranhas, whereas they rarely attacked anything that was motionless unless it was bloody. Dead birds and mammals, i, thrown whole and unskinned into the water, were ~ permitted to float off unmolested, whereas the skinned carcass of a good-sized monkey was at once seized, \. pulled under the water, and completely devoured by — the blood-crazy fish. A man who had dropped some- thing of value waded in after it to above the knees, but went very slowly and quietly, avoiding every possibility of disturbance, and not venturing to put his hands into the water. But nobody could bathe, and even the slightest disturbance in the water, such as that made by scrubbing the hands vigorously with soap, immediately attracted the attention of the savage little creatures, who darted to the place, evidently hoping to find some animal in difficulties. Once, while Miller and some Indians were attempting to launch a boat, and were making a great commotion in the water, a piranha attacked a naked Indian who belonged to the party, and mutilated him as he struggled and splashed, waist- deep in the stream. Men not making a splashing and struggling are rarely attacked ; but if one is attacked by any chance, the blood in the water maddens the piranhas, and they assail the man with frightful ferocity. At Corumba the weather was hot. In the patio of the comfortable little hotel we heard the cicadas ; but I did not hear the extraordinary screaming whistle of the locomotive cicada, which I had heard in the gardens of the house in which I stayed at Asuncion. This was as remarkable a sound as any animal sound to which I have listened, except only the batrachian-like wailing 62 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY of the tree hyrax in East Africa; and, like the East African mammal, this South American insect has a voice, or rather utters a sound, which, so far as it resembles any other animal sound, at the beginning remotely suggests batrachian affinities. The locomotive whistle part of the utterance, however, resembles nothing so much as a small steam siren; when first heard it seems impossible that it can be produced by an insect. On December 17 Colonel Rondon and several mem- bers of our party started on a shallow river steamer for the ranch of Senhor de Barros, “Las Palmeiras,” on the Rio Taquary. We went down the Paraguay for a few miles, and then up the Taquary. It was a beautiful trip. The shallow river—we were aground several times—wound through a vast marshy plain, with occasional spots of higher land on which trees grew. There were many water-birds. Darters swarmed. But the conspicuous and attractive bird was the stately jabiru stork. Flocks of these storks whitened the marshes and lined the river-banks. They were not shy for such big birds; before flying they had to run a few paces and then launch themselves on the air. Once, at noon, a couple soared round overhead in wide rings, rising higher and higher. On another occasion, late in the day, a flock passed by, gleaming white with black points in the long afternoon lights, and with them were spoonbills, showing rosy amid their snowy companions. Caymans, always called jacarés, swarmed ; and we killed scores of the noxious creatures. They were singularly indifferent to our approach and to the sound of the shots. Sometimes they ran into the water erect on their legs, looking like miniatures of the monsters of the prime. One showed by its behaviour how little an CHAP. IIT] AN ANT-EATER 63 ordinary shot pains or affects these dull-nerved, cold- blooded creatures. As it lay on a sand-bank, it was hit with a long 22 bullet. It slid into the water, but found itself in the midst of a school of fish. It at once forgot everything except its greedy appetite, and began catching the fish. It seized fish after fish, holding its head above water as soon as its jaws had closed on a fish; and a second bullet killed it. Some of the crocodiles when shot performed most extraordinary antics. Our weapons, by the way, were good, except Miller’s shotgun. The outfit furnished by the American - museum was excellent—except in guns and cartridges ; this gun was so bad that Miller had to use Fiala’s gun or else my Fox 12-bore. In the late afternoon we secured a more interesting creature than the jacarés. Kermit had charge of two hounds which we owed to the courtesy of one of our Argentine friends. They were biggish, nondescript animals, obviously good fighters, and they speedily developed the utmost affection for all the members of the expedition, but especially for Kermit, who took care of them. One we named “Shenzi,” the name given the wild bush natives by the Swahili, the semi-civilized African porters. He was good-natured, rough, and stupid—hence his name. ‘The other was called by a native name, “ Trigueiro.” The chance now came to try them. We were steaming between long stretches of coarse grass, about three feet high, when we spied from the deck a black object, very conspicuous against the vivid green. It was a giant ant-eater, or tamandua bandeira, one of the most extraordinary creatures of the latter-day world. It is about the size of a rather small black bear. It has a very long, narrow, toothless snout, with a tongue it can project a couple of feet; it is 64 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY covered with coarse black hair, save for a couple of white stripes ; it has a long, bushy tail and very powerful claws on its fore-feet. It walks on the sides of its fore- feet, with these claws curved in under the foot. The claws are used in digging out ant-hills; but the beast has courage, and in a grapple is a rather unpleasant enemy, in spite of its toothless mouth, for it can strike a formidable blow with these claws. It sometimes hugs a foe, gripping him tight; but its ordinary method of defending itself is to strike with its long, stout, curved claws, which, driven by its muscular forearm, can rip open man or beast. Several of our companions had had dogs killed by these ant-eaters ; and we came across one man with a very ugly scar down his back where he had been hit by one, which charged him when he came up to kill it at close quarters. As soon as we saw the giant tamandua we pushed off in a rowboat, and landed only a couple of hundred yards distant from our clumsy quarry. The tamandua through- out most of its habitat rarely leaves the forest, and it is a helpless animal in the open plain. The two dogs ran ahead, followed by Colonel Rondon and Kermit, with me behind carrying the rifle. In a minute or two the hounds overtook the cantering, shuffling creature, and promptly began to fight with it. ‘The combatants were so mixed up that I had to wait another minute or so before I could fire without risk of hitting a dog. We carried our prize back to the bank and hoisted it aboard the steamer. The sun was just about to set, behind dim mountains, many miles distant across the marsh. Soon afterward we reached one of the out-stations of the huge ranch we were about to visit, and hauled up alongside the bank for the night. There was a landing- place, and sheds and corrals. Several of the peons or CHAP. IIT] BIRDS AND FISHES 65 gauchos had come to meet us. After dark they kindled fires, and sat beside them singing songs in a strange minor key and strumming guitars. The red firelight flickered over their wild figures as they squatted away from the blaze, where the light and the shadow met. It was still and hot. There were mosquitoes, of course, and other insects of all kinds swarmed round every light; but the steamboat was comfortable, and we passed a pleasant night. "] At sunrise we were off for the fazenda, the ranch of M. de Barros. The baggage went in an ox-cart—which had to make two trips, so that all of my belongings reached the ranch a day later than I did. We rode small, tough ranch horses. The distance was some twenty miles. The whole country was marsh, varied by stretches of higher ground; and, although these stretches rose only three or four feet above the marsh, they were covered with thick jungle, largely palmetto scrub, or else with open palm forest. For three or four miles we splashed through the marsh, now and then crossing boggy pools where the little horses laboured hard not to mire down. Our dusky guide was clad in a shirt, trousers, and fringed leather apron, and wore spurs on his bare feet; he had a rope for a bridle, and two or three toes of each foot were thrust into little iron stirrups. The pools in the marsh were drying. They were filled with fish, most of them.dead or dying; and the birds had gathered to the banquet. The most notable dinner guests were the great jabiru storks ; the stately creatures dotted the marsh. But ibises and herons abounded ; the former uttered queer, querulous cries when they discovered our presence. ‘The spurred lap- wings were as noisy as they always are. ‘The ibis and 5 66 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY plover did not pay any heed to the fish; but the black carrion vultures feasted on them in the mud; and in the pools that were not dry, small alligators, the jacaré-tinga, were feasting also. In many places the stench from the dead fish was unpleasant. Then for miles we rode through a beautiful open forest of tall, slender carandé palms, with other trees scattered among them. Green parakeets with black heads chattered as they flew; noisy green and red parrots climbed among the palms; and huge macaws, some entirely blue, others almost entirely red, screamed loudly as they perched in the trees or took wing at our approach. If one was wounded, its cries kept its com- panions circling around overhead. The naturalists found the bird fauna totally different from that which they had been collecting in the hill-country near Corumba, seventy or eighty miles distant; and birds swarmed, both species and individuals. South America has the most extensive and most varied avifauna of all the continents. On the other hand, its mammalian fauna, although very interesting, is rather poor in number of species and individuals and in the size of the beasts. It possesses more mammals that are unique and distinctive in type than does any other continent save Australia ; and they are of higher and much more varied types than in Australia. But there is nothing approaching the majesty, beauty, and swarming mass of the great mammalian hfe of Africa, and in a less degree of tropical Asia; indeed, it does not even approach the similar mammalian life of North America and northern Eurasia, poor though this is compared with the seething vitality of tropical life in the Old World. During a geologically recent period, a period extending into that which saw man spread over the world in substantially cHap. 11] BIG GUNS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 67 the physical and cultural stage of many existing savages, South America possessed a varied and striking fauna of enormous beasts—sabre-tooth tigers, huge lions, masto- dons, horses of many kinds, camel-like pachyderms, giant ground-sloths, myledons the size of the rhinoceros, and many, many other strange and wonderful creatures. From some cause, concerning the nature of which we cannot at present even hazard a guess, this vast and giant fauna vanished completely, the tremendous catas- trophe (the duration of which is unknown) not being consummated until within a few thousand or a few score thousand years. When the white man reached South America, he found the same weak and impover- ished mammalian fauna that exists practically unchanged to-day. Elsewhere civilized man has been even more destructive than his very destructive uncivilized brothers of the magnificent mammalian life of the wilderness ; for ages he has been rooting out the higher forms of beast life in Europe, Asia, and North Africa; and in our own day he has repeated the feat, on a very large scale, in the rest of Africa and in North America. But in South America, although he is in places responsible for the wanton slaughter of the most interesting and the largest, or the most beautiful, birds, his advent has meant a positive enrichment of the wild mammalian fauna. None of the native grass-eating mammals, the graminivores, approach in size and beauty the herds of wild or half-wild cattle and horses, or so add to the interest of the landscape. ‘There is every reason why the good people of South America should waken, as we of North America, very late in the day, are beginning to waken, and as the peoples of northern Kurope—not southern EKurope—have already partially wakened, to the duty of preserving from impoverishment and ex- 68 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY tinction the wild life which is an asset of such interest and value in our several lands; but the case against civilized man in this matter is gruesomely heavy any- how, when the plain truth is told, and it is harmed by exaggeration. After five or six hours’ travelling through this country of marsh and of palm forest we reached the ranch for which we were heading. In the neighbourhood stood giant fig-trees, singly or in groups, with dense dark green foliage. Ponds, overgrown with water-plants, lay about ; wet meadow, and drier pastureland, open or dotted with palms and varied with tree-jungle, stretched for many miles on every hand. There are some thirty thousand head of cattle on the ranch, besides herds of horses and droves of swine, and a few flocks of sheep and goats. The home buildings of the ranch stood in a quadrangle, surrounded by a fence or low stockade. One end of the quadrangle was formed by the ranch-house itself, one story high, with whitewashed walls and red- tiled roof. Inside, the rooms were bare, with clean, whitewashed walls and palm-trunk rafters. There were solid wooden shutters on the unglazed windows. We slept in hammocks or on cots, and we feasted royally on delicious native Brazilian dishes. On another side of the quadrangle stood another long, low white build- ing with a red-tiled roof; this held the kitchen and the living-rooms of the upper-grade peons, the headmen, the cook, the jaguar-hunters, with their families: dark- skinned men, their wives showing varied strains of white, Indian, and negro blood. ‘The children tumbled mer- rily in the dust, and were fondly tended by their mothers. Opposite the kitchen stood a row of buildings, some whitewashed daub-and-wattle, with tin roofs, others of erect palm-logs with palni-leaf thatch. These were the cHap. 11] A SOUTH AMERICAN FAZENDA 69 saddle-room, storehouse, chicken-house, and_ stable. The chicken-house was allotted to Kermit and Miller for the preparation of the specimens; and there they worked industriously. With a big skin, like that of the giant ant-eater, they had to squat on the ground ; while the ducklings and wee chickens scuffled not only round the skin, but all over it, grabbing the shreds and scraps of meat and catching flies. The fourth end of the quad- rangle was formed by a corral and a big wooden scaf- folding on which hung hides and strips of drying meat. Extraordinary to relate, there were no mosquitoes at the ranch ; why I cannot say, as they ought to swarm in these vast pantanals, or swamps. Therefore, in spite of the heat, it was very pleasant. Near by stood other buildings: sheds, and thatched huts of palm-logs in which the ordinary peons lived, and big corrals. In the quadrangle were flamboyant trees, with their masses of brilliant red flowers and delicately cut, vivid green foli- age. Noisy oven-birds haunted these trees. In a high palm in the garden a family of green parakeets had taken up their abode, and were preparing to build nests. They chattered incessantly both when they flew and when they sat or crawled among the branches. Ibis and plover, crying and wailing, passed immediately overhead. Jacanas frequented the ponds near by ; the peons, with a familiarity which to us seems sacrilegious, but to them was entirely inoffensive and matter-of- course, called them “the Jesus Christ birds,” because they walked on the water. There was a wealth of strange bird life in the neighbourhood. There were large papyrus-marshes, the papyrus not being a fifth, perhaps not a tenth, as high as in Africa. In these swamps were many blackbirds. Some uttered notes that reminded me of our own redwings. Others, with 70 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY crimson heads and necks and thighs, fairly blazed ; often a dozen sat together on a swaying papyrus-stem, which their weight bent over. There were all kinds of extra- ordinary birds’-nests in the trees. There is still need for the work of the collector in South America. But I believe that already, so far as birds are concerned, there is infinitely more need for the work of the careful observer, who to the power of appreciation and obser- vation adds the power of vivid, truthful, and interesting narration—which means, as scientists no less than histo- rians should note, that training in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow-men. The outdoor naturalist, the faunal naturalist, who devotes himself primarily to a study of the habits and of the life-histories of birds, beasts, fish, and reptiles, and who can portray, truth- fully and vividly, what he has seen, could do work of more usefulness than any mere collector, in this upper Paraguay country. The work of the collector is indis- pensable ; but it is only a small part of the work that ought to be done; and after collecting has reached a certain point the work of the field observer with the gift for recording what he has seen becomes of far more importance. The long days spent riding through the swamp, the pantanal, were pleasant and interesting. Several times we saw the tamandua bandeira, the giant ant- bear. Kermit shot one because the naturalists eagerly wished for a second specimen; afterward we were relieved of all necessity to molest the strange, out-of- date creatures. It was a surprise to us to find them habitually frequenting the open marsh. They were always on muddy ground, and in the papyrus-swamp CHAP. I1I] A MARSHLAND JOURNEY 71 we found them in several inches of water. The stomach is thick-walled, like a gizzard; the stomachs of those we shot contained adult and larval ants, chiefly termites, together with plenty of black mould and fragments of leaves, both green and dry. Doubtless the earth and the vegetable matter had merely been taken incidentally, adhering to the viscid tongue when it was thrust into the ant masses. Out in the open marsh the tamandua could neither avoid observation, nor fight effectively, nor make good its escape by flight. It was curious to see one lumbering off at a rocking canter, the big bushy tail held aloft. One, while fighting the dogs, suddenly threw itself on its back, evidently hoping to grasp a dog with its paws; and it now and then reared in order to strike at its assailants. In one patch of thick jungle we saw a black howler monkey sitting motionless in a tree- top. We also saw the swamp-deer, about the size of our blacktail. It is a real swamp animal, for we found it often in the papyrus-swamps, and out in the open marsh, knee-deep in the water, among the aquatic plants. The tough little horses bore us well through the marsh. Often, in crossing bayous and ponds, the water rose almost to their backs ; but they splashed and waded, and, if necessary, swam through. ‘The dogs were a wild -looking set. Some were of distinctly wolfish appearance. These, we were assured, were descended, in part, from the big red wolf of the neighbourhood, a tall, lank animal, with much smaller teeth than the big northern wolf. The domestic dog is undoubtedly de- scended from at least a dozen different species of wild dogs, wolves, and jackals, some of them probably be- longing to what we style “ different genera.” The degree of fecundity or lack of fecundity between different 72 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY species varies in extraordinary and inexplicable fashion in different families of mammals. In the horse family, for instance, the species are not fertile inter se ; whereas among the oxen, species seemingly, at least, as widely separated as the horse, ass, and zebra—species such as the domestic ox, bison, yak, and gaur—breed freely together, and their offspring are fertile; the lion and tiger also breed together, and produce offspring which will breed with either parent stock ; and tame dogs in different quarters of the world, although all of them fertile inter se, are in many cases obviously blood-kin to the neighbouring wild, wolf-like or jackal-like creatures which are specifically, and possibly even generically, distinct from one another. The big red wolf of the South American plains is not closely related to the northern wolves; and it was to me unexpected to find it interbreeding with ordinary domestic dogs. In the evenings after dinner we sat in the bare ranch dining-room, or out under the trees in the hot darkness, and talked of many things: natural history with the naturalists, and all kinds of other subjects, both with them and with our Brazilian friends. Colonel Rondon is not simply “ an officer and a gentleman” in the sense that is honourably true of the best army officers in every good military service. He is also a peculiarly hardy and competent explorer, a good field naturalist and scientific man, a student and a philosopher. With him the conversation ranged from jaguar-hunting and the perils of exploration in the “ Matto Grosso,” the great wilderness, to Indian anthropology, to the dangers of a purely materialistic industrial civilization, and to Positivist morality. ‘The Colonel’s Positivism was, in very fact to him, a religion of humanity, a creed which bade him be just and kindly and useful to his fellow- CHAP. IIT] OUR NATIVE HUNTERS 73 men, to live his life bravely, and no less bravely to face death, without reference to what he believed, or did not believe, or to what the unknown hereafter might hold for him. The native hunters who accompanied us were swarthy men of mixed blood. They were barefooted and scantily clad, and each carried a long, clumsy spear and a keen machete, in the use of which he was an expert. Now and then, in thick jungle, we had to cut out a path, and it was interesting to see one of them, although cumbered by his unwieldy spear, handling his half-broken little horse with complete ease while he hacked at limbs and branches. Of the two ordinarily with us one was much the younger; and whenever we came to an unusually doubtful-looking ford or piece of boggy ground the elder man always sent the younger one on and sat on the bank until he saw what befell the experimenter. In that rather preposterous book of our youth, the “Swiss Family Robinson,” mention is made of a tame monkey called Nips, which was used to test all edible- looking things as to the healthfulness of which the adventurers felt doubtful ; and because of the obvious resemblance of function we christened this younger hunter Nips. Our guides were not only hunters, but cattle-herders. ‘The coarse dead grass is burned to make room for the green young grass on which the cattle thrive. Every now and then one of the men, as he rode ahead of us, without leaving the saddle, would drop a lighted match into a tussock of tall dead blades ; and even as we who were behind rode by tongues of hot flame would be shooting up, and a local prairie fire would have started. Kermit took Nips off with him for a solitary hunt one day. He shot two of the big marsh-deer, a buck 74 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY and a doe, and preserved them as museum specimens. They were in the papyrus growth, but their stomachs contained only the fine marsh-grass which grows in the water and on the land along the edges of the swamps ; the papyrus was used only for cover, not for food. The buck had two big scent-glands beside the nostrils; in the doe these were rudimentary. On this day Kermit also came across a herd of the big, fierce, white-lipped peccary ; at the sound of their grunting Nips promptly spurred his horse and took to his heels, explaining that the peccaries would charge them, hamstring the horses, and kill the riders. Kermit went into the jungle after the truculent little wild hogs on foot, and followed them for an hour, but never was able to catch sight of them. In the afternoon of this same day one of the jaguar- hunters—merely ranch hands, who knew something of the chase of the jaguar—who had been searching for tracks, rode in with the information that he had found fresh signs at a spot in the swamp about nine miles distant. Next morning we rose at two, and had started on our jaguar-hunt at three. Colonel Rondon, Kermit, and I, with the two trailers or jaguar-hunters, made up the party, each on a weedy, undersized marsh pony, accus- tomed to traversing the vast stretches of morass ; and we were accompanied by a brown boy, with saddle-bags holding our lunch, who rode a long-horned trotting steer, which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip. The two trailers carried each a long clumsy spear. We had a rather poor pack. Besides our own two dogs, neither of which was used to jaguar-hunting, there were the ranch-dogs, which were wellnigh worth- less, and then two jaguar hounds, borrowed for the occasion from a ranch six or eight leagues distant. These were the only hounds on which we could place senda (ranch) with the marsh deer on the saddle Returning to the fa Nips with the marsh deer From photographs by Kermi! Roosevelt CHapP. UT] A JAGUAR-HUNT 75 any trust, and they were led in leashes by the two trailers. One was a white bitch, the other, the best one we had, was a gelded black dog. They were lean, half-starved creatures with prick ears and a look of furtive wildness. As our shabby little horses shuffled away from the ranch-house, the stars were brilliant and the Southern Cross hung well up in the heavens, tilted to the right. The landscape was spectral in the light of the waning moon. At the first shallow ford, as horses and dogs splashed across, an alligator, the jacaré-tinga, some five feet long, floated unconcernedly among the splashing hoofs and paws; evidently at night it did not fear us. Hour after hour we shogged along. Then the night grew ghostly with the first dim grey of the dawn. The sky had become overcast. The sun rose red and angry through broken clouds ; his disc flamed behind the tall, slender columns of the palms, and lit the waste fields of papyrus. The black monkeys howled mournfully. The birds awoke. Macaws, parrots, parakeets, screamed at us and chattered at us as we rode by. Ibis called with wailing voices, and the plovers shrieked as they wheeled in the air. We waded across bayous and ponds, where white lilies floated on the water and thronging lilac-flowers splashed the green marsh with colour. At last, on the edge of a patch of jungle, in wet ground, we came on fresh jaguar tracks. Both the jaguar hounds challenged the sign. They were un- leashed and galloped along the trail, while the other dogs noisily accompanied them. The hunt led right through the marsh. Evidently the jaguar had not the least distaste for water. Probably it had been hunting for capybaras or tapirs, and it had gone straight through ponds and long, winding, narrow ditches or bayous, 76 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY where it must now and then have had to swim for a stroke or two. It had also wandered through the island-like stretches of tree-covered land, the trees at this point being mostly palms and tarumans; the taru- man is almost as big as a live-oak, with glossy foliage and a fruit like an olive. The pace quickened, the motley pack burst into yelling and howling; and then a sudden quickening of the note showed that the game had either climbed a tree or turned to bay in a thicket. The former proved to be the case. The dogs had entered a patch of tall tree-jungle, and as we cantered up through the marsh we saw the jaguar high among the forked limbs of a taruman-tree. It was a beautiful picture— the spotted coat of the big, lithe, formidable cat fairly shone as it snarled defiance at the pack below. I did not trust the pack; the dogs were not stanch, and if the jaguar came down and started I feared we might lose it. So I fired at once, from a distance of seventy yards. I was using my favourite rifle, the little Spring- field with which I have killed most kinds of African game, from the lion and elephant down; the bullets were the sharp, pointed kind, with the end of naked lead. At the shot the jaguar fell like a sack of sand through the branches, and, although it staggered to its feet, it went but a score of yards before it sank down, and when I came up it was dead under the palms, with three or four of the bolder dogs riving at it. The jaguar is the king of South American game, ranking on an equality with the noblest beasts of the chase of North America, and behind only the huge and fierce creatures which stand at the head of the big game of Africa and Asia. This one was an adult female. It was heavier and more powerful than a full-grown male cougar, or African panther or leopard. It was The brown boy on the long-horned trotting steer, which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt Colonel Roosevelt and the first jaguar From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt CHAP. IIT] JAGUAR-HUNTING 77 a big, powerfully-built creature, giving the same effect of strength that a tiger or lion does, and that the lithe leopards and pumas do not. Its flesh, by the way, proved good eating, when we had it for supper, although it was not cooked in the way it ought to have been. I tried it because I had found cougars such good eating ; I have always regretted that in Africa I did not try lion’s flesh, which I am sure must be excellent. Next day came Kermit’s turn. We had the miscel- ‘laneous pack with us, all much enjoying themselves ; but, although they could help in a jaguar-hunt to the extent of giving tongue and following the chase for half a mile, cowing the quarry by their clamour, they were not sufficiently staunch to be of use if there was any difficulty in the hunt. The only two dogs we could trust were the two borrowed jaguar hounds. ‘This was the black dog’s day. About ten in the morning we came to a long, deep, winding bayou. On the opposite bank stood a capybara, looking like a blunt-nosed pig, its wet hide shining black. I killed it, and it slid into the water. Then I found that the bayou extended for a mile or two in each direction, and the two hunter- guides said they did not wish to swim across for fear of the piranhas. Just at this moment we came across fresh jaguar tracks. It was hot, we had been travelling for five hours, and the dogs were much exhausted. The black hound in particular was nearly done up, for he had been led in a leash by one of the horsemen. He lay flat on the ground, panting, unable to catch the scent. Kermit threw water over him, and when he was thoroughly drenched and freshened, thrust his nose into the jaguar’s footprints. The game old hound at once and eagerly responded. As he snuffed the scent he challenged loudly, while still lying down. ‘Then he 78 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY staggered to his feet and started on the trail, going stronger with every leap. Evidently the big cat was not far distant. Soon we found where it had swum across the bayou. Piranhas or no piranhas, we now intended to get across ; and we tried to force our horses in at what seemed a likely spot. The matted growth of water-plants, with their leathery, slippery stems, formed an unpleasant barrier, as the water was swimming-deep for the horses. The latter were very unwilling to attempt the passage. Kermit finally forced his horse through the tangled mass, swimming, plunging, and struggling. He left a lane of clear water, through which we swam after him. The dogs splashed and swam behind us. On the other bank they struck the fresh trail and followed it at arun. It led into a long belt of timber, chiefly composed of low-growing nacury palms, with long, drooping, many-fronded branches. In silhouette they suggest coarse bamboos; the nuts hang in big clusters, and look like bunches of small, unripe bananas. Among the lower palms were scattered some big ordinary trees. We cantered along outside the timber belt, listen- ing to the dogs within; and in a moment a burst of yelling clamour from the pack told that the jaguar was afoot. These few minutes are the really exciting moments in the chase, with hounds, of any big cat that will tree. The furious baying of the pack, the shouts and cheers of encouragement from the galloping horsemen, the wil- derness surroundings, the knowledge of what the quarry is—all combine to make the moment one of fierce and thrilling excitement. Besides, in this case there was the possibility the jaguar might come to bay on the ground, in which event there would be a slight element of risk, as it might need straight shooting to stop a charge. However, about as soon as the long-drawn cHap. ur] A WELL-KNOWN JAGUAR 79 howling and eager yelping showed that the jaguar had been overtaken, we saw him, a huge male, up in the branches of a great fig-tree. A bullet behind the shoulder, from Kermit’s 405 Winchester, brought him dead to the ground. He was heavier than the very big male horse-killing cougar I shot in Colorado, whose skull Hart Merriam reported as the biggest he had ever seen; he was very nearly double the weight of any of the male African leopards we shot; he was nearly or quite the weight of the smallest of the adult African lionesses we shot while in Africa. He had the big bones, the stout frame, and the heavy muscular build of a small lion; he was not lithe and slender and long like a cougar or leopard; the tail, as with all jaguars, was short, while the girth of the body was great ; his coat was beautiful, with a satiny gloss, and the dark brown spots on the gold of his back, head, and sides were hardly as conspicuous as the black of the equally well-marked spots against his white belly. This was a well-known jaguar. He had occasionally indulged in cattle-killing; on one occasion during the floods he had taken up his abode near the ranch-house, and had killed a couple of cows and a young steer. The hunters had followed him, but he had made his escape, and for the time being had abandoned the neighbour- hood. In these marshes each jaguar had a wide irreg- ular range, and travelled a good deal, perhaps only passing a day or two in a given locality, perhaps spend- ing a week where game was plentiful. Jaguars love the water. They drink greedily and swim freely. In this country they rambled through the night across the marshes and prowled along the edges of the ponds and bayous, catching the capybaras and the caymans; for these small pond caymans, the jacaré-tinga, form part 80 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY of their habitual food, and a big jaguar when hungry will attack and kill large caymans and crocodiles if he can get them a few yards from the water. On these marshes the jaguars also followed the peccary herds; it is said that they always strike the hindmost of a band of the fierce little wild pigs. Elsewhere they often prey on the tapir. If in timber, however, the jaguar must kill it at once, for the squat, thick-skinned, wedge- shaped tapir has no respect for timber, as Colonel Rondon phrased it, and rushes with such blind, head- long speed through and among branches and trunks that if not immediately killed it brushes the jaguar off, the claws leaving long raking scars in the tough hide. Cattle are often killed. The jaguar will not meddle with a big bull; and is cautious about attacking a herd accompanied by a bull; but it will at times, where wild game is scarce, kill every other domestic animal. It is a thirsty brute, and if it kills far from water will often drag its victim a long distance toward a pond or stream; Colonel Rondon had once come across a horse which a jaguar had thus killed and dragged for over a mile. Jaguars also stalk and kill the deer; in this neighbourhood they seemed to be less habitual deer-hunters than the cougars; whether this is generally the case I cannot say. They have been known to pounce on and devour good-sized anacondas. In this particular neighbourhood the ordinary jaguars molested the cattle and horses hardly at all except now and then to kill calves. It was only occasionally that under special circumstances some old male took to cattle-killing. ‘There were plenty of capybaras and deer, and evidently the big spotted cats preferred the easier prey when it was available; exactly as in East Atrica we found the lions living almost exclusively on A South American jaguar From photographs by El::in R. Sanborn cHAP. 11] INACCURATE OBSERVATION _ 81 zebra and antelope, and not molesting the buffalo and domestic cattle, which in other parts of Africa furnish their habitual prey. In some other neighbourhoods, not far distant, our hosts informed us that the jaguars lived almost exclusively on horses and cattle. They also told us that the cougars had the same habits as the jaguars except that they did not prey on such big animals. The cougars on this ranch never molested the foals, a fact which astonished me, as in the Rockies they are the worst enemies of foals. It was interesting to find that my hosts, and the mixed-blood hunters and ranch workers, combined special knowledge of many of the habits of these big cats with a curious ignorance of of other matters concerning them and a readiness to believe fables about them. This was precisely what I had found to be the case with the old-time North American hunters in discussing the puma, bear, and wolf, and with the English and Boer hunters of Africa when they spoke of the lion and rhinoceros. Until the habit of scientific accuracy in observation and record is achieved, and until specimens are preserved and care- fully compared, entirely truthful men, at home in the wilderness, will whole-heartedly accept, and repeat as matters of gospel faith, theories which split the grizzly and black bears of each locality in the United States, and the lions and black rhinos of South Africa, or the jaguars and pumas of any portion of South America, into several different species, all with widely different habits. They will, moreover, describe these imaginary habits with such sincerity and minuteness that they deceive most listeners; and the result sometimes is that an otherwise good naturalist will perpetuate these fables, as Hudson did when he wrote of the puma. Hudson was a capital observer and writer when he dealt with 6 82 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY the ordinary birds and mammals of the well-settled districts near Buenos Aires and at the mouth of the Rio Negro; but he knew nothing of the wilderness. This is no reflection on him; his books are great favourites of mine, and are to a large degree models of what such books should be; I only wish that there were hundreds of such writers and observers who would give us similar books for all parts of America. But it is a mistake to accept him as an authority on that con- cerning which he was ignorant. An interesting incident occurred on the day we killed our first jaguar. We took our lunch beside a small but deep and obviously permanent pond, I went to the edge to dip up some water, and something growled or bellowed at me only a few feet away. It was a jacaré- tinga, or small cayman, about five feet long. I paid no heed to it at the moment. But shortly afterward when our horses went down to drink, it threatened them and frightened them; and then Colonel Rondon and Kermit called me to watch it. It lay on the surface of the water only a few feet distant from us and threatened us ; we threw cakes of mud at it, whereupon it clashed its jaws and made short rushes at us, and when we threw sticks it seized them and crunched them. We could not drive it away. Why it should have shown such truculence and heedlessness I cannot imagine, unless perhaps it was a female, with eggs near by. In another little pond a jacaré-tinga showed no less anger when another of my companions approached. It bellowed, opened its jaws, and lashed its tail. Yet these pond jacarés never actually molested even our dogs in the ponds, far less us on our horses. This same day others of our party had an interesting experience with the creatures in another pond. One cHap. 11] CAYMANS AND PIRANHAS 83 of them was Commander da Cunha (of the Brazilian Navy), a capital sportsman and delightful companion. They found a deepish pond a hundred yards or so long, and thirty or forty across. It was tenanted by the small caymans and by capybaras—the largest known rodent, a huge aquatic guinea-pig, the size of a small sheep. It also swarmed with piranhas, the ravenous fish of which I have so often spoken. Undoubtedly the caymans were subsisting largely on these piranhas. But the tables were readily turned if any caymans were injured. When a capybara was shot and sank in the water, the piranhas at once attacked it, and had eaten half the carcass ten minutes later. But much more extraordinary was the fact that when a cayman about five feet long was wounded, the piranhas attacked and tore it, and actually drove it out on the bank to face its human foes. The fish first attacked the wound ; then, as the blood maddened them, they attacked all the soft parts, their terrible teeth cutting out chunks of tough hide and flesh. Evidently they did not molest either cayman or capybara while it was unwounded, but blood excited them to frenzy. Their habits are in some ways inexplicable. We saw men frequently bathing un- molested ; but there are places where this is never safe, and in any place if a school of the fish appear swimmers are in danger ; and a wounded man or beast is in deadly peril if piranhas are in the neighbourhood. Ordinarily it appears that an unwounded man is attacked only by accident. Such accidents are rare, but they happen with sufficient frequency to justify much caution in entering water where piranhas abound. We frequently came across ponds tenanted by numbers of capybaras. The huge, pig-like rodents are said to be shy elsewhere. Here they were tame. ‘The 84 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY water was their home and refuge. They usually went ashore to feed on the grass, and made well-beaten trails in the marsh immediately around the water; but they must have travelled these at night, for we never saw them more than a few feet away from the water in the daytime. Even at midday we often came on them standing beside a bayou or pond. The dogs would rush wildly at such a standing beast, which would wait until they were only a few yards off, and then dash into and under the water. The dogs would also run full tilt into the water, and it was then really funny to see their surprise and disappointment at the sudden and com- plete disappearance of their quarry. Often a capybara would stand or sit on its haunches in the water, with only its blunt, short-eared head above the surface, quite heedless of our presence. But if alarmed it would dive, for capybaras swim with equal facility on or below the surface; and if they wish to hide, they rise gently among the rushes or water-lily leaves with only their nostrils exposed. In these waters the capybaras and small caymans paid no attention to one another, swim- ming and resting in close proximity. They both had the same enemy, the jaguar. The capybara is a game animal only in the sense that a hare or rabbit is. The flesh is good to eat, and its amphibious habits and queer nature and surroundings make it interesting. In some of the ponds the water had about gone, and the capybaras had become for the time being beasts of the marsh and the mud; although they could always find little slimy pools, under a mass of water-lilies, in which to lie and hide. Our whole stay on this ranch was delightful. On the long rides we always saw something of interest, and often it was sumething entirely new to us. Early one CHAP. I11] ARMADILLOS 85 moming we came across two armadillos—the big, nine-banded armadillo. We were riding with the pack through a dry, sandy pasture country, dotted with clumps of palms, round the trunks of which grew a dense jungle of thorns and Spanish bayonets. The armadillos were feeding in an open space between two of these jungle clumps, which were about a hundred yards apart. One was on all fours ; the other was in a squatting position, with its forelegs off the ground. ‘Their long ears were very prominent. The dogs raced at them. I had always supposed that armadillos merely shuffled along, and curled up for protection when menaced ; and I was almost as surprised as if I had seen a turtle gallop when these two armadillos bounded off at a run, going as fast as rabbits. One headed back for the nearest patch of jungle, which it reached. The other ran at full speed—and ran really fast, too—until it nearly reached the other patch, a hundred yards distant, the dogs in full cry immediately behind it. Then it sud- denly changed its mind, wheeled in its tracks, and came back like a bullet right through the pack. Dog after dog tried to seize it or stop it, and turned to pursue it ; but its wedge-shaped snout and armoured body, joined to the speed at which it was galloping, enabled it to drive straight ahead through its pursuers, not one of which could halt it or grasp it, and it reached in safety its thorny haven of refuge. It had run at speed about a hundred and fifty yards. I was much impressed by this unexpected exhibition; evidently this species of armadillo only curls up as a last resort, and ordi- narily trusts to its speed, and to the protection its build and its armour give it while running, in order to reach its burrow or other place of safety. Twice, while laying railway tracks near Sio Paulo, Kermit 86 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY had accidentally dug up armadillos with a steam- shovel. There were big ant-hills, some of them of huge dimensions, scattered through the country. Sometimes they were built against the stems of trees. We did not here come across any of the poisonous or biting ants, which, when sufficiently numerous, render certain districts uninhabitable. They are ordinarily not very numerous. Those of them that march in large bodies kill nestling birds, and at once destroy any big animal unable to get out of their way. It has been suggested that nestlings in their nests are in some way immune from the attack of these ants. The experiments of our naturalists tended to show that this was not the case. They plundered any nest they came across and could get at. Once we saw a small herd of peccaries, one a sow followed by three little pigs—they are said to have only two young, but we saw three, although, of course, it is possible one belonged to another sow. The herd galloped into a mass of thorny cover the hounds could not penetrate ; and when they were in safety we heard them utter, from the depths of the jungle, a curious moaning sound. On one ride we passed a clump of palms which were fairly ablaze with bird colour. There were magnificent hyacinth macaws; green parrots with red splashes; toucans with varied plumage, black, white, red, yellow ; green jacmars ; flaming orioles and both blue and dark red tanagers. It was an extraordinary collection. All were noisy. Perhaps there was a snake that had drawn them by its presence; but we could find no snake. The assembly dispersed as we rode up; the huge blue macaws departed in pairs, uttering their hoarse “ ar- Nine-banded armadillo Collared peccary from photographs by Elwin R. Sanborn CHAP. 111] JABIRU 87 rah-h, ar-rah-h.” It has been said that parrots in the wilderness are only noisy on the wing. They are certainly noisy on the wing; and those that we saw were quiet while they were feeding; but ordinarily when they were perched among the branches, and especially when, as in the case of the little parakeets near the house, they were gathering materials for nest- building, they were just as noisy as while flying. The water-birds were always a delight. We shot merely the two or three specimens the naturalists needed for the museum. I killed a wood-ibis on the wing with the handy little Springfield, and then lost all the credit I had thus gained by a series of inexcusable misses, at long range, before I finally killed a jabiru. Kermit shot a jabiru with the Liiger automatic. The great, splendid birds, standing about as tall as a man, show fight when wounded, and advance against their assailants, clattering their formidable bills. One day we found the nest of a jabiru in a mighty fig-tree, on the edge of a patch of jungle. It was a big platform of sticks, placed on a horizontal branch. There were four half-grown young standing on it. We passed it in the morning, when both parents were also perched alongside ; the sky was then overcast, and it was not possible to photograph it with the small camera. In the early afternoon when we again passed it the sun was out, and we tried to get photographs. Only one parent bird was present at this time. It showed no fear. I noticed that, as it stood on a branch near the nest, its bill was slightly open. It was very hot, and I suppose it had opened its bill just as a hen opens her bill in hot weather. As we rode away the old bird and the four young birds were standing motionless, and with gliding flight the other old bird was returning to the nest. It is hard to give 88 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY an adequate idea of the wealth of bird life in these marshes. A naturalist could, with the utmost advantage, spend six months on such a ranch as that we visited. He would have to do some collecting, but only a little. Exhaustive observation in the field is what is now most needed. Most of this wonderful and harmless bird life should be protected by law ; and the mammals should receive reasonable protection. The books now most needed are those dealing with the life-histories of wild creatures. Near the ranch-house, walking familiarly among the cattle, we saw the big, deep-billed Ani blackbirds. They feed on the insects disturbed by the hoofs of the cattle, and often cling to them and pick off the ticks. It was the end of the nesting season, and we did not find their curious communal nests, in which half a dozen females lay their eggs indiscriminately. The common ibises in the ponds near by—which usually went in pairs, instead of in flocks like the wood-ibis—were very tame, and so were the night herons and all the small herons. In flying, the ibises and storks stretch the neck straight in front of them. The jabiru—a splendid bird on the wing—also stretches his neck out in front, but there appears to be a slight downward curve at the base of the neck, which may be due merely to the craw. The big slender herons, on the contrary, bend the long neck back in a beautiful curve, so that the head is nearly between the shoulders. One day I saw what I at first thought was a small yellow-bellied kingfisher hovering over a pond, and finally plunging down to the surface of the water after a school of tiny young fish; but it proved to be a bien-te-vi king-bird. Curved-bill wood-hewers, birds the size and somewhat the coloration of veeries, but with long, slender sickle- CHAP. III] RANCHMEN AND BULLS 89 bills, were common in the little garden back of the house ; their habits were those of creepers, and they scrambled with agility up, along, and under the trunks and branches, and along the posts and rails of the fence, thrusting the bill into crevices for insects. The oven- birds, which had the carriage and somewhat the look of wood-thrushes, I am sure would prove delightful friends’on a close acquaintance ; they are very individual, not only in the extraordinary domed mud nests they build, but in all their ways, in their bright alertness, their interest in and curiosity about whatever goes on, their rather jerky quickness of movement, and their loud and varied calls. With a little encouragement they become tame and familiar. The parakeets were too noisy, but otherwise were most attractive little birds, as they flew to and fro and scrambled about in the top of the palm behind the house. There was one showy kind of king-bird or tyrant flycatcher, lustrous black with a white head. One afternoon several score cattle were driven into a big square corral near the house, in order to brand the calves and a number of unbranded yearlings and two- year-olds. A special element of excitement was added by the presence of a dozen big bulls which were to be turned into draught-oxen. The agility, nerve, and prowess of the ranch workmen, the herders or gauchos, were noteworthy. The dark-skinned men were obviously mainly of Indian and negro descent, although some of them also showed a strong strain of white blood. They wore the usual shirt, trousers, and fringed leather apron, with jim-crow hats. Their bare feet must have been literally as tough as horn; for when one of them roped a big bull he would brace himself, bending back until he was almost sitting down and digging his heels into the 90 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY ground, and the galloping beast would be stopped short and whirled completely round when the rope tautened. The maddened bulls, and an occasional steer or cow, charged again and again with furious wrath; but two or three ropes would settle on the doomed beast, and down it would go; and when it was released and rose and charged once more, with greater fury than ever, the men, shouting with laughter, would leap up the sides of the heavy stockade. We stayed at the ranch until a couple of days before Christmas. Hitherto the weather had been lovely. The night before we left there was a torrential tropic down- pour. It was not unexpected, for we had been told that the rainy season was overdue. The following fore- noon the baggage started, in a couple of two-wheeled ox-carts, for the landing where the steamboat awaited us. Each cart was drawn by eight oxen. The huge wheels were over seven feet high. Early in the after- noon we followed on horseback, and overtook the carts as darkness fell, just before we reached the landing on the river’s bank. The last few miles, after the final reaches of higher, tree-clad ground had been passed, were across a level plain of low ground on which the water stood, sometimes only up to the ankles of a man on foot, sometimes as high as his waist. Directly in front of us, many leagues distant, rose the bold moun- tains that lie west of Corumba. Behind them the sun was setting and kindled the overcast heavens with lurid splendour. Then the last rose tints faded from the sky ; the horses plodded wearily through the water ; on every side stretched the marsh, vast, lonely, desolate in the grey of the half-light. We overtook the ox-carts. The cattle strained in the yokes; the drivers wading along- side cracked their whips and uttered strange cries ; the dadiv yy &q yoi3ojoyd v woLy qouel ay} 02 yovq Le. oy uo Ajied aijua ayy, CHAP. IIT] WE REACH CORUMBA 91 carts rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry ground. Under it the half- clad, wild-looking ox-drivers and horse-herders slung their hammocks; and close by they lit a fire and roasted, or scorched, slabs and legs of mutton, spitted on sticks and propped above the smouldering flame. Next morning, with real regret, we waved good-bye to our dusky attendants, as they stood on the bank, grouped around a little fire, beside the big, empty ox-carts. A dozen miles down-stream a row-boat fitted for a sprit-sail put off from the bank. The owner, a countryman from a small ranch, asked for a tow to Corumb4, which we gave. He had with him in the boat his comely brown wife—who was smoking a very large cigar—their two children, a young man, and a couple of trunks and various other belongings. On Christmas Eve we reached Corumb4, and rejoined the other members of the expedition. CHAPTER IV THE HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY Avr Corumba our entire party, and all their belong- ings, came aboard our good little river boat, the Myoac. Christmas Day saw us making our way steadily up- stream against the strong current, and between the green and beautiful banks of the upper Paraguay. The shallow little steamer was jammed with men, dogs, rifles, partially cured skins, boxes of provisions, ammu- nition, tools, and photographic supplies, bags containing tents, cots, bedding, and clothes, saddles, hammocks, and the other necessaries for a trip through the “great wilderness,” the “ matto grosso” of Western Brazil. It was a brilliantly clear day, and, although of course in that latitude and at that season the heat was intense later on, it was cool and pleasant in the early morning. We sat on the forward deck, admiring the trees on the brink of the sheer river banks, the lush, rank grass of the marshes, and the many water-birds. The two pilots, one black and one white, stood at the wheel. Colonel Rondon read Thomas a Kempis. Kermit, Cherrie, and Miller squatted outside the railing on the deck over one paddle-wheel and put the final touches on the jaguar- skins. Fiala satisfied himself that the boxes and bags were in place. It was probable that hardship lay in the future; but the day was our own, and the day was 92 CHAP. Iv] OPOSSUM 93 pleasant. In the evening the after-deck, open all around, where we dined, was decorated with green boughs and rushes, and we drank the health of the President of the United States and of the President of Brazil. Now and then we passed little ranches on the river’s edge. This is a fertile land, pleasant to live in, and any settler who is willing to work can earn his living. There are mines; there is water-power; there is abundance of rich soil. The country will soon be opened by rail. It offers a fine field for immigration and for agriculture, mining, and business development; and it has a great future. Cherrie and Miller had secured a little owl a month before in the Chaco, and it was travelling with them in a basket. It was a dear little bird, very tame and affectionate. It liked to be handled and petted; and when Miller, its especial protector, came into the cabin, it would make queer little noises as a signal that it wished to be taken up and perched on his hand. Cherrie and Miller had trapped many mammals. Among them was a tayra weasel, whitish above and black below, as big and bloodthirsty as a fisher-martin; and a tiny opossum no bigger than a mouse. They had taken four species of opossum, but they had not found the curious water-opossum which they had obtained on the rivers flowing into the Caribbean Sea. This opossum, which is black and white, swims in the streams like a musk-rat or otter, catching fish and living in burrows which open under water. Miller and Cherrie were puzzled to know why the young throve, leading such an existence of constant immersion ; one of them once found a female swimming and diving freely with four quite well-grown young in her pouch. 94 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY We saw on the banks screamers—big, crested waders of archaic type, with spurred wings, rather short bills, and no especial affinities with other modern birds. In one meadow by a pond we saw three marsh-deer, a buck and two does. They stared at us, with their thickly haired tails raised on end. These tails are black under- neath, instead of white as in our whitetail deer. One of the vagaries of the ultra-concealing colorationists has been to uphold the (incidentally quite preposterous) theory that the tail of our deer is coloured white beneath so as to harmonize with the sky and thereby mislead the cougar or wolf at the critical moment when it makes its spring ; but this marsh-deer shows a black instead of a white flag, and yet has just as much need of protection from its enemies, the jaguar and the cougar. In South America concealing coloration plays no more part in the lives of the adult deer, the tamandua, the tapir, the peccary, the jaguar, and the puma than it plays in Africa in the lives of such animals as the zebra, the sable ante- lope, the wildebeeste, the lion, and the hunting hyena. Next day we spent ascending the Sao Lourenco. It was narrower than the Paraguay, naturally, and the swirling brown current was, if anything, more rapid. The strange tropical trees, standing densely on the banks, were matted together by long bush ropes— lianas, or vines, some very slender and very long. Sometimes we saw brilliant red or blue flowers, or masses of scarlet berries on a queer palm-like tree, or an array of great white blossoms on a much larger tree. In a lagoon bordered by the taquara bamboo a school of big otters were playing; when they came to the surface, they opened their mouths like seals, and made a loud hissing noise. The crested screamers, dark grey and as large as turkeys, perched on the very topmost CHAP. Iv] THE CUYABA RIVER 95 branches of the tallest trees. Hyacinth macaws screamed harshly as they flew across the river. Among the trees was the guan, another peculiar bird as big as a big grouse, and with certain habits of the wood-grouse, but not akin to any northern game-bird. The windpipe of the male is very long, extending down to the end of the breast- bone, and the bird utters queer guttural screams. A dead cayman floated down-stream, with a black vulture devouring it. Capybaras stood or squatted on the banks ; sometimes they stared stupidly at us; sometimes they plunged into the river at our approach. At long intervals we passed little clearings. In each stood a house of palm-logs, with steeply pitched roof of palm thatch; and near by were patches of corn and mandioc. The dusky owner, and perhaps his family, came out on the bank to watch us as we passed. It was a hot day—the thermometer on the deck in the shade stood at nearly 100° F. Biting flies came aboard even when we were in mid-stream. Next day we were ascending the Cuyaba River. It had begun raining in the night, and the heavy downpour continued throughout the forenoon. In the morning we halted at a big cattle-ranch to get fresh milk and beef. There were various houses, sheds, and corrals near the river’s edge, and fifty or sixty milch cows were gathered in one corral. Spurred plover, or lapwings, strolled familiarly among the hens. Parakeets and red- headed tanagers lit in the trees over our heads. A kind of primitive houseboat was moored at the bank. A woman was cooking breakfast over a little stove at one end. The crew were ashore. The boat was one of those which are really stores, and which travel up and down these rivers, laden with what the natives most need, and stopping wherever there is a ranch. They 96 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY are the only stores which many of the country-dwellers see from year’s end to year’s end. They float down- stream, and up-stream are poled by their crew, or now and then get a tow from a steamer. This one had a house with a tin roof; others bear houses with thatched roofs, or with roofs made of hides. The river wound through vast marshes broken by belts of woodland. Always the two naturalists had something of interest to tell of their past experience, suggested by some bird or beast we came across. Black and golden orioles, slightly crested, of two different species were found along the river; they nest in colonies, and often we passed such colonies, the long pendulous nests hanging from the boughs of trees directly over the water. Cherrie told us of finding such a colony built round a big wasp- nest, several feet in diameter. These wasps are venomous and irritable, and few foes would dare venture near birds’- nests that were under such formidable shelter; but the birds themselves were entirely unafraid, and obviously were not in any danger of disagreement with their dangerous protectors. We saw a dark ibis flying across the bow of the boat, uttering his deep, two-syllabled note. Miller told how on the Orinoco these ibises plunder the nests of the big river-turtles. They are very skilful in finding where the female turtle has laid her eggs, scratch them out of the sand, break the shells, and suck the contents. It was astonishing to find so few mosquitoes on these marshes. ‘They did not in any way compare as pests with the mosquitoes on the lower Mississippi, the New Jersey coast, the Red River of the North, or the Kootenay. Back in the forest near Corumbé the naturalists had found them very bad indeed. Cherrie had spent two or three days on a mountain-top which cHar. Iv] THE SAO JOAO FAZENDA 97 was bare of forest ; he had thought there would be few mosquitoes, but the long grass harboured them (they often swarm in long grass and bush, even where there is no water), and at night they were such a torment that as soon as the sun set he had to go to bed under his mosquito-netting. Yet on the vast marshes they were not seriously troublesome in most places. I was informed that they were not in any way a bother on the grassy uplands, the high country north of Cuyabé, which from thence stretches eastward to the coastal region. It is at any rate certain that this inland region of Brazil, including the state of Matto Grosso, which we were traversing, is a healthy region, excellently adapted to settlement ; railroads will speedily penetrate it, and then it will witness an astonishing development. On the morning of the 28th we reached the home buildings of the great Sao Joio fazenda, the ranch of Senhor Joo da Costa Marques. Our host himself, and his son, Dom Joéo the younger, who was state secretary of agriculture, and the latter’s charming wife, and the president of Matto Grosso, and several other ladies and gentlemen, had come down the river to greet us, from the city of Cuyaba, several hundred miles farther up- stream. As usual, we were treated with whole-hearted and generous hospitality. Some miles below the ranch- house the party met us, on a stern-wheel steamboat and a launch, both decked with many flags. The handsome white ranch-house stood only a few rods back from the river’s brink, in a grassy opening dotted with those noble trees, the royal palms. Other trees, buildings of all kinds, flower-gardens, vegetable-gardens, fields, corrals, and enclosures with high white walls stood near the house. A detachment of soldiers or state police, with a band, were in front of the house, and two flag- 7 98 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY poles, one with the Brazilian flag already hoisted. The American flag was run up on the other as I stepped ashore, while the band played the national anthems of the two countries. The house held much comfort ; and the comfort was all the more appreciated because even indoors the thermometer stood at 97° F. In the late afternoon heavy rain fell, and cooled the air. We were riding at the time. Around the house the birds were tame: the parrots and parakeets crowded and chattered in the tree-tops; jacanas played in the wet ground just back of the garden; ibises and screamers called loudly in the swamps a little distance off. Until we came actually in sight of this great ranch- house we had been passing through a hot, fertile, pleasant wilderness, where the few small palm-roofed houses, each in its little patch of sugar-cane, corn, and mandioc, stood very many miles apart. One of these little houses stood on an old Indian mound, exactly like the mounds which form the only hillocks along the lower Mississippi, and which are also of Indian origin. These occasional Indian mounds, made ages ago, are the highest bits of ground in the immense swamps of the upper Paraguay region. There are still Indian tribes in this neighbourhood. We passed an Indian fishing village on the edge of the river, with huts, scaffoldings for drying the fish, hammocks, and rude tables. They cultivated patches of bananas and sugar-cane. Out ina shallow place in the river was a scaffolding on which the Indians stood to spear fish. ‘The Indians were friendly, peaceable souls, for the most part dressed like the poorer classes among the Brazilians. Next morning there was to have been a great roded, or round-up, and we determined to have a hunt first, as there were still several kinds of beasts of the chase, 4adavqy &q ytossojoys v wosy $9]qe} apni pue ‘syoourmey ‘Yysy eyi BUIAIp IO} ssuIpjoyeos ‘syny YAM “Jaatr dy} JO a8pa ay} uo aseT[IA Surysy uvipuy ue passed aA aselIA UIPUT UY CHAP. Iv] A RODEO 99 notably tapirs and peccaries, of which the naturalists desired specimens. Dom Jodo, our host, and his son accompanied us. Theirs is a noteworthy family. Born in Matto Grosso, in the tropics, our host had the look of a northerner and, although a grandfather, he possessed an abounding vigour and energy such as very few men of any climate or surroundings do possess. All of his sons are doing well. The son who was with us was a stalwart, powerful man, a pleasant companion, an able public servant, a finished horseman, and a skilled hunter. He carried a sharp spear, not a rifle, for in Matto Grosso it is the custom in hunting the jaguar for riflemen and spearmen to go in at him together when he turns at bay, the spearman holding him off if the first shot fails to stop him, so that another shot can be put in. Altogether, our host and his son reminded one of the best type of American ranchmen and planters, of those planters and ranchmen who are adepts in bold and manly field sports, who are capital men of business, and who also often supply to the state skilled and faithful public servants. The hospitality the father and son extended to us was patriarchal: neither, for instance, would sit at table with their guests at the beginning of the formal meals; instead they exercised a close personal supervision over the feast. Our charming hostess, however, sat at the head of the table. At six in the morning we started, all of us on fine horses. 'The day was lowering and overcast. A dozen dogs were with us, but only one or two were worth anything. ‘Three or four ordinary countrymen, the ranch hands, or vaqueiros, accompanied us; they were mainly of Indian blood, and would have been called peons, or caboclos, in other parts of Brazil, but here were always spoken to and of as “camaradas.” ‘They 100 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY were, of course, chosen from among the men who were hunters, and each carried his long, rather heavy and clumsy jaguar-spear. In front rode our vigorous host and his strapping son, the latter also carrying a jaguar- spear. The bridles and saddles of the big ranchmen and of the gentlefolk generally were handsome, and were elaborately ornamented with silver. The stirrups, for instance, were not only of silver, but contained so much extra metal in ornamented bars and rings that they would have been awkward for less-practised riders. Indeed, as it was, they were adapted only for the tips of boots with long, pointed toes, and were impossible for our feet; our hosts’ stirrups were long, narrow silver slippers. ‘The camaradas, on the other hand, had jim- crow saddles and bridles, and rusty little iron stirrups into which they thrust their naked toes. But all, gentry and commonalty alike, rode equally well and with the same skill and fearlessness. To see our hosts gallop at headlong speed over any kind of country toward the sound of the dogs with their quarry at bay, or to see them handle their horses in a morass, was a pleasure. It was equally a pleasure to see a camarada carrying his heavy spear, leading a hound in a leash, and using his machete to cut his way through the tangled vine-ropes of a jungle, all at the same. time and all without the slightest refer- ence to the plunges, and the odd and exceedingly jerky behaviour, of his wild, half-broken horse—for on such a ranch most of the horses are apt to come in the categories of half-broken or else of broken-down. One dusky tatterdemalion wore a pair of boots from which he had removed the soles, his bare, spur-clad feet pro- jecting from beneath the uppers. He was on a little devil of a stallion, which he rode blindfold for a couple of miles, and there was a regular circus when he removed CHAP. Iv] JABIRU STORKS 101 the bandage ; but evidently it never occurred to him that the animal was hardly a comfortable riding-horse for a man going out hunting and encumbered with a spear, a machete, and other belongings. The eight hours that we were out we spent chiefly in splashing across the marshes, with excursions now and then into vine-tangled belts and clumps of timber. Some of the bayous we had to cross were uncomfortably boggy. We had to lead the horses through one, wading ahead of them; and even so two of them mired down, and their saddles had to be taken off before they could be gotten out. Among the marsh plants were fields and strips of the great caetérush. These caeté flags towered above the other and lesser marsh plants. They were higher than the heads of the horsemen. Their two or three huge banana-like leaves stood straight up on end. The large brilliant flowers—orange, red, and yellow— were joined into a singularly shaped and solid string or cluster. Humming-birds buzzed round these flowers ; one species, the sickle-billed hummer, has its bill especially adapted for use in these queerly shaped blossoms, and gets its food only from them, never appearing around any other plant. The birds were tame, even those striking and beautiful birds which under man’s persecution are so apt to become scarce and shy. The huge jabiru storks, stalking through the water with stately dignity, sometimes refused to fly until we were only a hundred yards off; one of them flew over our heads at a distance of thirty or forty yards. The screamers, crying curu-curu, and the ibises, wailing dolefully, came even closer. The wonderful hyacinth macaws, in twos and threes, accompanied us at times for several hundred yards, hovering over our heads and uttering their rasping screams. In one wood 102 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY we came on the black howler monkey. The place smelt almost like a menagerie. Not watching with sufficient care I brushed against a sapling on which the venomous fire-ants swarmed. They burnt the skin like red-hot cinders, and left little sores. More than once in the drier parts of the marsh we met small caymans making their way from one pool to another. My horse stepped over one before I saw it. The dead carcasses of others showed that on their wanderings they had encountered jaguars or human foes. We had been out about three hours when one of the dogs gave tongue in a large belt of woodland and jungle to the left of our line of march through the marsh. The other dogs ran to the sound, and after a while the long barking told that the thing, whatever it was, was at bay or else in some refuge. We made our way toward the place on foot. The dogs were baying excitedly at the mouth of a huge hollow log, and very short examination showed us that there were two peccaries within, doubt- less a boar and sow. However, just at this moment the peccaries bolted from an unsuspected opening at the other end of the log, dove into the tangle, and instantly disappeared with the hounds in full cry after them. It was twenty minutes later before we again heard the pack baying. With much difficulty, and by the inces- sant swinging of the machetes, we opened a trail through the network of vines and branches. This time there was only one peccary, the boar. He was at bay in a half-holow stump. The dogs were about his head, raving with excitement, and it was not possible to use the rifle; so I borrowed the spear of Dom Joao the younger, and killed the fierce little boar therewith. This was an animal akin to our collared peccary, smaller and less fierce than its white-jawed kinsfolk. cHaP.Iv] A TROPICAL DELUGE 103 It is a valiant and truculent little beast, nevertheless, and if given the chance will bite a piece the size of a teacup out of either man or dog. It is found singly or in small parties, feeds on roots, fruits, grass, and delights to make its home in hollow logs. If taken young it makes an affectionate and entertaining pet. When the two were in the hollow log we heard them utter a kind of moaning, or menacing, grunt, long drawn. An hour or two afterward we unexpectedly struck the fresh tracks of two jaguars and at once loosed the dogs, who tore off yelling, on the line of the scent. Unfortunately, just at this moment the clouds burst and a deluge of rain drove in our faces. So heavy was the downpour that the dogs lost the trail and we lost the dogs. We found them again only owing to one of our caboclos ; an Indian with a queer Mongolian face, and no brain at all that I could discover, apart from his special dealings with wild creatures, cattle, and horses. He rode in a huddle of rags; but nothing escaped his eyes, and he rode anything anywhere. ‘The downpour continued so heavily that we knew the roded had been abandoned, and we turned our faces for the long, dripping, splashing ride homeward. Through the gusts of driving rain we could hardly see the way. Once the rain lightened, and half a mile away the sunshine gleamed through a rift in the leaden cloud-mass. Suddenly in this rift of shimmering brightness there appeared a flock of beautiful white egrets. With strong, graceful wing-beats the birds urged their flight, their plumage flashing in the sun. They then crossed the rift and were swallowed in the grey gloom of the day. On the marsh the dogs several times roused capy- baras. Where there were no ponds of sufficient size 104 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY the capybaras sought refuge in flight through the tangled marsh. They ran well. Kermit and Fiala went after one on foot, full-speed, for a mile and a half, with two hounds which then bayed it—literally bayed it, for the capybara fought with the courage of a gigantic wood- chuck. If the pack overtook a capybara, they, of course, speedily finished it; but a single dog of our not very valorous outfit was not able to overmatch its shrill- squeaking opponent. Near the ranch-house, about forty-feet up in a big tree, was a jabiru’s nest containing young jabirus. The young birds exercised themselves by walking solemnly round the edge of the nest and opening and shutting their wings. Their heads and necks were down-covered, instead of being naked like those of their parents. Fiala wished to take a moving-picture of them while thus engaged, and so, after arranging his machine, he asked Harper to rouse the young birds by throwing a stick up to the nest. He did so, whereupon one young jabiru hastily opened its wings in the desired fashion, at the same time seizing the stick in its bill! It dropped it at once, with an air of comic disappointment, when it found that the stick was not edible. There were many strange birds round about. Toucans were not uncommon. [I have never seen any other bird take such grotesque and comic attitudes as the toucan. This day I saw one standing in the top of a tree with the big bill pointing straight into the air and the tail also cocked perpendicularly. The toucan is a born comedian. On the river and in the ponds we saw the finfoot, a bird with feet like a grebe and bill and tail like those of a darter ; but, like so many South American birds, with no close affiliations among other species. The exceedingly rich bird fauna of South America Wood ibis From a photograph by Elwin R. Sanborn South American jabiru From a photograph by Elwin R. Sanborn Sariema From a photograph by Miller cHaP. Iv] RAINY SEASON SETS IN 105 contains many species which seem to be survivals from a very remote geologic past, whose kinsfolk have perished under the changed conditions of recent ages ; and in the case of many, like the hoatzin and screamer, their like is not known elsewhere. Herons of many species swarmed in this neighbourhood. The handsomest was the richly coloured tiger bittern. Two other species were so unlike ordinary herons that I did not recognize them as herons at all until Cherrie told me what they were. One had a dark body, a white-speckled or ocellated neck, and a bill almost like that of an ibis. The other looked white, but was really mauve-coloured, with black on the head. When perched on a tree, it stood like an ibis; and instead of the measured wing-beats charac- teristic of a heron’s flight, it flew with a quick, vigorous flapping of the wings. There were queer mammals, too, as well as birds. In the fields Miller trapped mice of a kind entirely new. Next morning the sky was leaden, and a drenching rain fell as we began our descent of the river. The rainy season had fairly begun. For our good fortune we were still where we had the cabins aboard the boat, and the ranch-house, in which to dry our clothes and soggy shoes; but in the intensely humid atmosphere, hot and steaming, they stayed wet a long time, and were still moist when we put them on again. Before we left the house where we had been treated with such courteous hospitality—the finest ranch-house in Matto Grosso, on a huge ranch where there are some sixty thousand head of horned cattle—the son of our host, Dom Joao the younger, the jaguar-hunter, presented me with two magnificent volumes on the palms of Brazil, the work of Doctor Barboso Rodriguez, one- time director of the Botanical Gardens at Rio Janeiro. 106 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY The two folios were in a box of native cedar. No gift more appropriate, none that I would in the future value more as a reminder of my stay in Matto Grosso, could have been given me. All that afternoon the rain continued. It was still pouring in torrents when we left the Cuyaba for the Sao Lourenco and steamed up the latter a few miles before anchoring; Dom Joao the younger had accom- panied us in his launch. The little river steamer was of very open build, as is necessary in such a hot climate; and to keep things dry necessitated also keeping the atmosphere stifling. The German taxidermist who was with Colonel Rondon’s party, Reinish, a very good fellow from Vienna, sat on a stool, alternately drenched with rain and sweltering with heat, and muttered to himself : * Ach, Schweinerei !” Two small caymans, of the common species, with prominent eyes, where at the bank where we moored, and betrayed an astonishing and stupid tameness. Neither the size of the boat nor the commotion caused by the paddles in any way affected them. They lay inshore, not twenty feet from us, half out of water; they paid not the slightest heed to our presence, and only reluctantly left when repeatedly poked at, and after having been repeatedly hit with clods of mud and sticks ; and even then one first crawled up on shore, to find out if thereby he could not rid himself of the annoy- ance we caused him. Next morning it was still raining, but we set off on a hunt, anyway, going afoot. A couple of brown cama- radas led the way, and Colonel Rondon, Dom Joao, Kermit, and I, followed. The incessant downpour speedily wet us to the skin. We made our way slowly through the forest, the machetes playing right and left, CHAP. Iv | COATIS 107 up and down,.at every step, for the trees were tangled in a network of vines and creepers. Some of the vines were as thick as a man’s leg. Mosquitoes hummed about us, the venomous fire-ants stung us, the sharp spines of a small palm tore our hands—afterward some of the wounds festered. Hour after hour we thus walked on through the Brazilian forest. We saw monkeys, the common yellowish kind, a species of cebus ; a couple were shot for the museum and the others raced off among the upper branches of the trees. Then we came on a party of coatis, which look like reddish, long-snouted, long-tailed, lanky raccoons. ‘They were in the top of a big tree. One, when shot at and missed, bounced down to the ground, and ran off through the bushes; Kermit ran after it and secured it. He came back to find us peering hopelessly up into the tree-top, trying to place where the other coatis were. Kermit solved the difficulty by going up along some huge twisted lianas for forty or fifty feet and exploring the upper branches ; whereupon down came three other coatis through the branches, one being caught by the dogs and the other two escaping. Coatis fight savagely with both teeth and claws. Miller told us that he once saw one of them kill a dog. They feed on all small mammals, birds, and reptiles, and even on some large ones ; they kill iguanas; Cherrie saw a rattling chase through the trees, a coati following an iguana at full speed. We heard the rush of a couple of tapirs as they broke away in the jungle in front of the dogs, and headed, according to their custom, for the river; but we never saw them. One of the party shot a bush deer —a very pretty, graceful creature, smaller than our whitetail deer, but kin to it, and doubtless the southern- most representative of the whitetail group. 108 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY The whitetail deer—using the word to designate a group of deer which can either be called a subgenus with many species, or a widely spread species diverging into many varieties—is the only North American species which has spread down into and has outlying repre- sentatives in South America. It has been contended that the species has spread from South America north- ward. I do not think so; and the specimen thus ob- tained furnished a probable refutation of the theory. It was a buck, and had just shed its small antlers. The antlers are, therefore, shed at the same time as in the north, and it appears that they are grown at the same time as in the north. Yet this variety now dwells in the tropics south of the equator, where the spring, and the breeding season for most birds, comes at the time of the northern fall in September, October, and Novem- ber. That the deer is an intrusive immigrant, and that it has not yet been in South America long enough to change its mating season in accordance with the climate, as the birds—geologically doubtless very old residents —have changed their breeding season, is rendered prob- able by the fact that it conforms so exactly in the time of its antler growth to the universal rule which obtains in the great arctogeal realm, where deer of many species abound, and where the fossil forms show that they have long existed. The marsh-deer, which has diverged much farther from the northern type than this bush-deer (its horns show a likeness to those of a blacktail) often keeps its antlers until June or July, although it begins to grow them again in August; however, too much stress must not be laid on this fact, inasmuch as the wapiti and the cow caribou both keep their antlers until spring. The specialization of the marsh-deer, by the way, is further shown in its hoofs, which, thanks to its CHAP. IV] NEW YEAR’S DAY 109 semiaquatic mode of life, have grown long, like those of such African swamp antelopes as the lechwe and situtunga. Miller, when we presented the monkeys to him, told us that the females both of these monkeys and of the howlers themselves, took care of the young, the males not assisting them, and, moreover, that when the young one was a male he had always found the mother keeping by herself, away from the old males. On the other hand, among the marmosets he found the fathers taking as much care of the young as the mothers ; if the mother had twins, the father would usually carry one, and sometimes both, around with him. After we had been out four hours our camaradas got lost; three several times they travelled round in a com- plete circle ; and we had to set them right with the compass. About noon the rain, which had been falling almost without interruption for forty-eight hours, ceased, and in an hour or two the sun came out. We went back to the river, and found our row-boat. In it the hounds—a motley and rather worthless lot—and the rest of the party were ferried across to the opposite bank, while Colonel Rondon and I stayed in the boat, on the chance that a tapir might be roused and take to the river. However, no tapir was found ; Kermit killed a collared peccary, and I shot a capybara representing a colour-phase the naturalists wished. Next morning, January 1, 1914, we were up at five and had a good New Year’s Day breakfast of hardtack, ham, sardines, and coffee before setting out on an all- day’s hunt on foot. I much feared that the pack was almost or quite worthless for jaguars, but there were two or three of the great spotted cats in the neighbour- hood, and it seemed worth while to make a try for 110 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY them, anyhow. After an hour or two we found the fresh tracks of two, and after them we went. Our party consisted of Colonel Rondon, Lieutenant Roga- ciano—an excellent man, himself a native of Matto Grosso, of old Matto Grosso stock—two others of the party from the Sio Joo ranch, Kermit, and myself, together with four dark-skinned camaradas, cow-hands from the same ranch. We soon found that the dogs would not by themselves follow the jaguar trail ; nor would the camaradas, although they carried spears. Kermit was the one of our party who possessed the requisite speed, endurance, and eyesight, and accordingly he led. Two of the dogs would follow the track half a dozen yards ahead of him, but no farther; and two of the camaradas could just about keep up with him. For an hour we went through thick jungle, where the machetes were constantly at work. Then the trail struck off straight across the marshes, for jaguars swim and wade as freely as marsh-deer. It was a hard walk. The sun was out. We were drenched with sweat. We were torn by the spines of the innumerable clusters of small palms with thorns like needles. We were bitten by the hosts of fire-ants, and by the mosquitoes, which we scarcely noticed where the fire-ants were found, exactly as all dread of the latter vanished when we were menaced by the big red wasps, of which a dozen stings will disable a man, and if he is weak, or in bad health, will seriously menace his life. In the marsh we were continually wading, now up to our knees, now up to our hips. Twice we came to long bayous so deep that we had to swim them, holding our rifles above water in our right hands. The floating masses of marsh grass, and the slimy stems of the water-plants, doubled our work as we swam, cumbered by our clothing and boots CHAP. IV] A HARD DAY’S WORK 111 and holding our rifles aloft. One result of the swim, by the way, was that my watch, a veteran of Cuba and Africa, came to an indignant halt. Then on we went, hampered by the weight of our drenched clothes, while our soggy boots squelched as we walked. There was no breeze. In the undimmed sky the sun stood almost overhead. The heat beat on us in waves. By noon I could only go forward at a slow walk, and two of the party were worse off than I was. Kermit, with the dogs and two camaradas close behind him, disap- peared across the marshes at a trot. At last, when he was out of sight, and it was obviously useless to follow him, the rest of us turned back toward the boat. The two exhausted members of the party gave out, and we left them under a tree. Colonel Rondon and Lieu- tenant Rogaciano were not much tired ; I was some- what tired, but was perfectly able to go for several hours more if I did not try to go too fast ; and we three walked on to the river, reaching it about half-past four, after eleven hours’ stiff walking with nothing to eat. We were soon on the boat. A relief party went back for the two men under the tree, and soon after it reached them, Kermit also turned up with his hounds and bis camaradas trailing wearily behind him. He had followed the jaguar trail until the dogs were so tired that even after he had bathed them, and then held their noses in the fresh footprints, they would pay no heed to the scent. A hunter of scientific tastes, a hunter-naturalist, or even an outdoors naturalist, or faunal naturalist interested in big mammals, with a pack of hounds such as those with which Paul Rainey hunted lion and leopard in Africa, or such a pack as the packs of Johnny Goff or Jake Borah, with which I hunted cougar, lynx, and bear in the Rockies, or such 112 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY packs as those of the Mississippi and Louisiana planters, with whom I have hunted bear, wild-cat, and deer in the cane-brakes of the lower Mississippi, would not only enjoy fine hunting in these vast marshes of the upper Paraguay, but would also do work of real scien- tific value as regards all the big cats. Only a limited number of the naturalists who have worked in the tropics have had any experience with the big beasts whose life-histories possess such peculiar in- terest. Of all the biologists who have seriously studied the South American fauna on the ground, Bates probably rendered most service ; but he hardly seems even to have seen the animals with which the hunter is fairly familiar. His interests, and those of the other biologists of his kind, lay in other directions. In conse- quence, in treating of the life-histories of the very inter- esting big game, we have been largely forced to rely either on native report, in which acutely accurate obser- vation is invariably mixed with wild fable, or else on the chance remarks of travellers or mere sportsmen, who had not the training to make them understand even what it was desirable to observe. Nowadays there is a growing proportion of big-game hunters, of sports- men, who are of the Schilling, Selous, and Shiras type. These men do work of capital value for science. The mere big-game butcher is tending to disappear as a type. On the other hand, the big-game hunter who is a good observer, a good field naturalist, occupies at present a more important position than ever before, and it is now recognized that he can do work which the closet naturalist cannot do. The big-game hunter of this type, and the out-doors, faunal naturalist, the student of the life-histories of big mammals, have open to them in South America a wonderful field in which to work. CHAP. IV] FIGHTING ANTS 113 The fire-ants, of which I have above spoken, are generally found on a species of small tree or sapling, with a greenish trunk. They bend the whole body as they bite, the tail and head being thrust downward. A few seconds after the bite the poison causes considerable pain ; later it may make a tiny festering sore. There is certainly the most extraordinary diversity in the traits by which nature achieves the perpetuation of species. Among the warrior and predaceous insects the prowess is, in some cases, of such type as to render the possessor practically immune from danger. In other cases the condition of its exercise may normally be the sacrifice of the life of the possessor. There are wasps that prey on formidable fighting spiders, which yet instinctively so handle themselves that the prey practically never succeeds in either defending itself or retaliating, being captured and paralyzed with unerring efficiency and with entire security to the wasp. The wasp’s safety is absolute. On the other hand, these fighting ants, in- cluding the soldiers even among the termites, are fran- tically eager for a success which generally means their annihilation ; the condition of their efficiency is abso- lute indifference to their own security. Probably the majority of the ants that actually lay hold on a foe suffer death in consequence; certainly they not merely run the risk of, but eagerly invite, death. The following day we descended the Sao Lourenco to its junction with the Paraguay, and once more began the ascent of the latter. At one cattle-ranch where we stopped, the troupials, or big black-and-yellow orioles, had built a large colony of their nests on a dead tree near the primitive little ranch-house. The birds were breeding ; the old ones were feeding the young. In this neighbourhood the naturalists found many birds 8 114 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY that were new to them, including a tiny woodpecker no bigger than a ruby-crowned kinglet. They had collected two night monkeys—nocturnal monkeys, not as agile as the ordinary monkey ; these two were found at dawn, having stayed out too late. The early morning was always lovely on these rivers, and at that hour many birds and beasts were to be seen. One morning we saw a fine marsh buck, holding his head aloft as he stared at us, his red coat vivid against the green marsh. Another of these marsh-deer swam the river ahead of us; I shot at it as it landed, and ought to have got it, but did not. As always with these marsh-deer—and as with so many other deer— I was struck by the revealing or advertising quality of its red coloration; there was nothing in its normal surroundings with which this coloration harmonized ; so far as it had any effect whatever it was always a revealing and not a concealing effect. When the animal fled, the black of the erect tail was an additional revealing mark, although not of such startlingly advertising quality as the flag of the whitetail. The whitetail, in one of its forms, and with the ordinary whitetail custom of dis- playing the white flag as it runs, is found in the immediate neighbourhood of the swamp-deer. It has the same foes. Kvidently it is of no survival consequence whether the running deer displays a white or a black flag. Any competent observer of big game must be struck by the fact that in the great majority of the species the colora- tion is not concealing, and that in many it has a highly revealing quality. Moreover, if the spotted or striped young represent the ancestral coloration, and if, as seems probable, the spots and stripes have, on the whole, some slight concealing value, it is evident that in the life-history of most of these large mammals, both A jabiru’s nest The young birds exercised themselves by walking solemnly round the edge of the nest From a photograph by Harper A troupial nest The troupials, or big black and yellow orioles, had built a large colony of their nests.on a dead tree From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt CHAP. Iv] MARSHY PLAINS 115 among those that prey and those that are preyed on, concealing coloration has not been a survival factor ; throughout the ages during which they have survived they have gradually lost whatever of concealing colora- tion they may once have had—if any—and have developed a coloration which under present conditions has no con- cealing and perhaps even has a revealing quality, and which in all probability never would have had a con- cealing value in any “ environmental complex ” in which the species as a whole lived during its ancestral develop- ment. Indeed, it seems astonishing, when one observes these big beasts—and big waders and other water-birds —in their native surroundings, to find how utterly non- harmful their often strikingly revealing coloration is. Evidently the various other survival factors, such as habit, and in many cases covert, etc., are of such over- mastering importance that the coloration is generally of no consequence whatever, one way or the other, and is only very rarely a factor of any serious weight. The junction of the Sao Lourenco and the Paraguay is a day’s journey above Corumba. From Corumba there is a regular service by shallow steamers to Cuyaba, at the head of one fork, and to Sao Luis de Caceres, at the head of the other. The steamers are not powerful and the voyage to each little city takes a week. There are other forks that are navigable. Above Cuyabé and Caceres launches go up-stream for several days’ journey, except during the dryest parts of the season. North of this marshy plain lies the highland, the Plan Alto, where the nights are cool and the climate healthy. But I wish emphatically to record my view that these marshy plains, although hot, are also healthy ; and, moreover, the mos- quitoes, in most places, are not in sufficient numbers to be a serious pest, although, of course, there must be 116 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY nets for protection against them at night. The country is excellently suited for settlement, and offers a remark- able field for cattle-growing. Moreover, it is a paradise for water-birds and for many other kinds of birds, and for many mammals. It is literally an ideal place in which a field naturalist could spend six months or a year. It is readily accessible, it offers an almost virgin field for work, and the life would be healthy as well as delightfully attractive. The man should have a steam- launch. In it he could with comfort cover all parts of the country from south of Coimbra to north of Cuyaba and Caceres. There would have to be a good deal of collecting (although nothing in the nature of butchery should be tolerated), for the region has only been super- ficially worked, especially as regards mammals. But if the man were only a collector he would leave undone the part of the work best worth doing. The region offers extraordinary opportunities for the study of the life-histories of birds which, because of their size, their beauty, or their habits, are of exceptional interest. All kinds of problems would be worked out. For example, on the morning of the 3rd, as we were ascending the Paraguay, we again and again saw in the trees on the bank big nests of sticks, into and out of which parakeets were flying by the dozen. Some of them had straws or twigs in their bills. In some of the big globular nests we could make out several holes of exit or entrance. Apparently these parakeets were building or remodelling communal nests ; but whether they had themselves built these nests, or had taken old nests and added to or modified them, we could not tell. There was so much of interest all along the banks that we were continually longing to stop and spend days where we were. Mixed flocks of scores of cormorants and darters covered certain cHaP. Iv] THE FARQUHAR SYNDICATE 117 trees, both at sunset and after sunrise. Although there was no deep forest, merely belts or fringes of trees along the river, or in patches back of it, we frequently saw monkeys in this riverine tree-fringe—active common monkeys and black howlers of more leisurely gait. We saw caymans and capybaras sitting socially near one another on the sand-banks. At night we heard the calling of large flights of tree-ducks. These were now the most common of all the ducks, although there were many muscovy ducks also. The evenings were pleasant and not hot, as we sat on the forward deck; there was a waxing moon. The screamers were among the most noticeable birds. They were noisy; they perched on the very tops of the trees, not down among the branches ; and they were not shy. They should be carefully pro- tected by law, for they readily became tame, and then come familiarly round the houses. From the steamer we now and then saw beautiful orchids in the trees on the river bank. One afternoon we stopped at the home buildings, or headquarters, of one of the great outlying ranches of the Brazil Land and Cattle Company, the Farquhar syndicate, under the management of Murdo Mackenzie —than whom we have had in the United States no better citizen or more competent cattleman. On this ranch there are some seventy thousand head of stock. We were warmly greeted by McLean, the head of the ranch, and his assistant Ramsey, an old Texan friend. Among the other assistants, all equally cordial, were several Belgians and Frenchmen. The hands were Paraguayans and Brazilians, and a few Indians—a hard- bit set, each of whom always goes armed and knows how to use his arms, for there are constant collisions with cattle thieves from across the Bolivian border. 118 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY and the ranch has to protect itself. These cow-hands, vaqueiros, were of the type with which we were now familiar : dark-skinned, lean, hard-faced men, in slouch- hats, worn shirts and trousers, and fringed leather aprons, with heavy spurs on their bare feet. They are wonder- ful riders and ropers, and fear neither man nor beast. I noticed one Indian vagueiro standing in exactly the attitude of a Shilluk of the White Nile, with the sole of one foot against the other leg, above the knee. This is a region with extraordinary possibilities of cattle- raising. At this ranch there was a tannery, a slaughter-house, a cannery, a church, buildings of various kinds and all degrees of comfort for the thirty or forty families who made the place their headquarters ; and the handsome, white, two-story big house, standing among lemon- trees and flamboyants on the river-brink. There were all kinds of pets around the house. The most fascinating was a wee spotted fawn, which loved being petted. Half a dozen curassows of different species strolled through the rooms; there were also parrots of several different species, and immediately outside the house four or five herons, with unclipped wings, which would let us come within a few feet and then fly gracefully off, shortly afterward returning to the same spot. They included big and little white egrets and also the mauve and pearl-coloured heron, with a partially black head and many-coloured bill, which flies with quick, re- peated wing-flappings, instead of the usual slow heron wing-beats. In the warehouse were scores of skins of jaguar, puma, ocelot, and jaguarundi, and one skin of the big, small-toothed red wolf. These were all brought in by the cow-hands and by friendly Indians, a price being Snake-birds and cormorants Mixed flocks of scores of cormorants and darters covered certain trees, both at sunset and after sunrise From photographs by Harper cHAP. IV] COLORATION OF CAT TRIBE 119 put on each, as they destroyed the stock. The jaguars occasionally killed horses and full-grown cows, but not bulls. The pumas killed the calves. The others killed an occasional very young calf, but ordinarily only sheep, little pigs, and chickens. There was one black jaguar- skin ; melanism is much more common among jaguars than pumas, although once Miller saw a black puma that had been killed by Indians. The patterns of the jaguar-skins, and even more of the ocelot-skins, showed wide variation, no two being alike. The pumas were for the most part bright red, but some were reddish- grey, there being much the same dichromatism that I found among the Colorado kinsfolk. The jaguarundis were dark brownish-grey. All these animals—the spotted jaguars and ocelots, the monochrome black jaguars, red pumas, and dark grey jaguarundis—were killed in the same locality, with the same environment. A glance at the skins and a moment’s serious thought would have been enough to show any sincere thinker that in these cats the coloration pattern, whether con- cealing or revealing, is of no consequence one way or the other as a survival factor. The spotted patterns conferred no benefit as compared with the nearly or quite monochrome blacks, reds, and dark greys. The bodily condition of the various beasts was equally good, showing that their success in life—that is, their ability to catch their prey—was unaffected by their several colour schemes. Except white, there is no colour so conspicuously advertising as black ; yet the black jaguar had been a fine, well-fed, powerful beast. The spotted patterns in the forests, and perhaps even in the marshes which the jaguars so frequently traversed, are probably a shade less conspicuous than the monochrome red and grey, but the puma and jaguarundi are just as hard to 120 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY see, and evidently find it just as easy to catch prey, as the jaguar and ocelot. The little fawn which we saw was spotted ; the grown deer had lost the spots; if the spots do really help to conceal the wearer, it is evident that the deer has found the original concealing colora- tion of so little value that it has actually been lost in the course of the development of the species. When these big cats and the deer are considered, together with the dogs, tapirs, peccaries, capybaras, and big ant- eaters which live in the same environment, and when we also consider the difference between the young and the adult deer and tapirs (both of which when adult have substituted a complete or partial monochrome for the ancestral spots and streaks), it is evident that in the present life and in the ancestral development of the big mammals of South America coloration is not and has not been a survival factor ; any pattern and any colour may accompany the persistence and development of the qualities and attributes which are survival factors. In- deed, it seems hard to believe that in their ordinary environments such colour schemes as the bright red of the marsh-deer, the black of the black jaguar, and the black with white stripes of the great tamandué, are not positive detriments to the wearers. Yet such is evidently not the case. Evidently the other factors in species- survival are of such overwhelming importance that the coloration becomes negligible from this standpoint, whether it be concealing or revealing. ‘The cats mould themselves to the ground as they crouch or crawl. They take advantage of the tiniest scrap of cover. They move with extraordinary stealth and patience. The other animals which try to sneak off in such a manner as to escape observation approach more or less closely to the ideal which the cats most nearly realize. cHaP. iv] ENTERING THE FOREST 121 Wariness, sharp senses, the habit of being rigidly motion- less when there is the least suspicion of danger, and ability to take advantage of cover, all count. On the bare, open, treeless plain, whether marsh, meadow, or upland, anything above the level of the grass is seen at once. A marsh-deer out in the open makes no effort to avoid observation; its concern is purely to see its foes in time to leave a dangerous neighbourhood. ‘The deer of the neighbouring forest skulk and hide and lie still in dense cover to avoid being seen. The white- lipped peccaries make no effort to escape observation by being either noiseless or motionless ; they trust for defence to their gregariousness and truculence. The collared peccary also trusts to its truculence, but seeks refuge in a hole where it can face any opponent with its formidable biting apparatus. As for the giant tamandua, in spite of its fighting prowess I am wholly unable to understand how such a slow and clumsy beast has been able through the ages to exist and thrive sur- rounded by jaguars and pumas. Speaking generally, the animals that seek to escape observation trust pri- marily to smell to discover their foes or their prey, and see whatever moves and do not see whatever is mo- tionless. By the morning of January 5 we had left the marsh region. ‘There were low hills here and there, and the land was covered with dense forest. From time to time we passed little clearings with palm-thatched houses. We were approaching Caceres, where the easiest part of our trip would end. We had lived in much comfort on the little steamer. The food was plentiful and the cooking good. At night we slept on deck in cots or hammocks. The mosquitoes were rarely troublesome, although in the daytime we were 122 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY sometimes bothered by numbers of biting horse-flies. The bird-life was wonderful. One of the characteristic sights we were always seeing was that of a number of heads and necks of cormorants and snake-birds, without any bodies, projecting above water, and disappearing as the steamer approached. Skimmers and _ thick-billed tern were plentiful here right in the heart of the conti- nent. In addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red-legged plover, which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions of the far north, now in the cold temperate regions of the south. These latter wide-wandering birds of the sea- shore and the river-bank pass most of their lives in regions of almost perpetual sunlight. They spend the breeding season, the northern summer, in the land of the midnight sun, during the long arctic day. They then fly for endless distances down across the north temperate zone, across the equator, through the lands where the days and nights are always of equal length, into another hemisphere, and spend another summer of long days and long twilights in the far south, where the antarctic winds cool them, while their nesting home, at the other end of the world, is shrouded beneath the iron desolation of the polar night. In the late afternoon of the 5th we reached the quaint old-fashioned little town of Sao Luis de Caceres, on the outermost fringe of the settled region of the cHap. tv] SAO LUIS DE CACERES 128 state of Matto Grosso, the last town we should see before reaching the villages of the Amazon. As we approached we passed half-clad black washerwomen on the river’s edge. The men, with the local band, were gathered at the steeply sloping foot of the main street, where the steamer came to her moorings. Groups of women and girls, white and brown, watched us from the low bluff; their skirts and bodices were red, blue, green, of all colours. Sigg had gone ahead with much of the baggage ; he met us in an improvised motor-boat, consisting of a dugout, to the side of which he had clamped our Evinrude motor ; he was giving several of the local citizens of prominence a ride, to their huge enjoyment. The streets of the little town were unpaved, with narrow brick sidewalks. The one-story houses were white or blue, with roofs of red tiles and window- shutters of latticed woodwork, come down from colonial days and tracing back through Christian and Moorish Portugal to a remote Arab ancestry. Pretty faces, some dark, some light, looked out from these windows ; their mothers’ mothers, for generations past, must thus have looked out of similar windows in the vanished colonial days. But now, even here in Caceres, the spirit of the new Brazil is moving; a fine new govern- ment school has been started, and we met its principal, an earnest man doing excellent work, one of the many teachers who, during the last few years, have been brought to Matto Grosso from Sao Paulo, a centre of the new educational movement which will do so much for Brazil. Father Zahm went to spend the night with some French Franciscan friars, capital fellows. I spent the night at the comfortable house of Lieutenant Lyra ; a hot-weather house with thick walls, big doors, and an 124 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY open patio bordered by a gallery. Lieutenant Lyra was to accompany us; he was an old companion of Colonel Rondon’s explorations. We visited one or two of the stores to make some final purchases, and in the evening strolled through the dusky streets and under the trees of the plaza; the women and girls sat in groups in the doorways or at the windows, and here and there a stringed instrument tinkled in the darkness. From Caceres onward we were entering the scene of Colonel Rondon’s explorations. For some eighteen years he was occupied in exploring and in opening tele- graph-lines through the eastern or north-middle part of the great forest state—the wilderness state of the Matto Grosso, the Great Wilderness, or, as Australians would call it, the Bush. Then, in 1907, he began to penetrate the unknown region lying to the north and west. He was the head of the exploring expeditions sent out by the Brazilian Government to traverse for the first time this unknown land; to map for the first time the courses of the rivers, which from the same divide run into the upper portions of the Tapajos and the Madeira, two of the mighty affluents of the Amazon, and to build telegraph-lines across to the Madeira, where a line of Brazilian settlements, connected by steamboat lines and a railroad, again occurs. Three times he pene- trated into this absolutely unknown, Indian-haunted wilderness, being absent for a year or two at a time, and suffering every imaginable hardship, before he made his way through to the Madeira and completed the telegraph-line across. The officers and men of the Brazilian Army and the civilian scientists who followed him shared the toil and the credit of the task. Some of his men died of beriberi ; some were killed or wounded by the Indians ; he himself almost died of fever ; again cHaP. Iv] COLONEL RONDON’S WORK 125 and again his whole party was reduced almost to the last extremity by starvation, disease, hardship, and the overexhaustion due to wearing fatigues. In dealing with the wild, naked savages he showed a combination of fearlessness, wariness, good judgment, and resolute patience and kindliness. The result was that they ulti- mately became his firm friends, guarded the telegraph- lines, and helped the few soldiers left at the isolated, widely separated little posts. He and his assistants explored, and mapped for the first time, the Juruena and the Gy-Parand, two important affluents of the Tapajos and the Madeira respectively. The Tapajos and the Madeira, like the Orinoco and Rio Negro, have been highways of travel for a couple of centuries. The Madeira (as later the Tapajos) was the chief means of ingress, a century and a half ago, to the little Portu- guese settlements of this far interior region of Brazil ; one of these little towns, named Matto Grosso, being the original capital of the province. It has long been abandoned by the Government, and practically so by its inhabitants, the ruins of palace, fortress, and church now rising amid the rank, tropical luxuriance of the wild forest. The mouths of the main affluents of these highway rivers were as a rule well known. But in many cases nothing but the mouth was known. The river itself was not known, and it was placed on the map by guesswork. Colonel Rondon found, for example, that the course of the Gy-Paran4 was put down on the map two degrees out of its proper place. He with his party was the first to find out its sources, the first to traverse its upper course, the first to map its length. He and his assistants performed a similar service for the Juruena, discovering the sources, discovering and descending some of the branches, and for the first time 126 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY making a trustworthy map of the main river itself, until its junction with the Tapajos. Near the watershed between the Juruena and the Gy-Parand he established his farthest station to the westward, named José Boni- facio, after one of the chief republican patriots of Brazil. A couple of days’ march north-westward from this station, he in 1909 came across a part of the stream of a river running northward between the Gy-Parand and the Juruena; he could only guess where it debouched, believing it to be into the Madeira, although it was possible that it entered the Gy-Parana or Tapajos. The region through which it flows was unknown, no civilized man having ever penetrated it ; and as all con- jecture as to what the river was, as to its length, and as to its place of entering into some highway river, was mere guesswork, he had entered it on his sketch-maps as the Rio da Diuvida, the River of Doubt. Among the officers of the Brazilian Army and the scientific civilians who have accompanied him there have been not only expert cartographers, photographers, and _tele- graphists, but astronomers, geologists, botanists, and zoologists. Their reports, published in excellent shape by the Brazilian Government, make an invaluable series of volumes, reflecting the highest credit on the explorers, and on the Government itself. Colonel Rondon’s own accounts of his explorations, of the Indian tribes he has visited, and of the beautiful and wonderful things he has seen, possess a peculiar interest. CHAPTER V UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS AFTER leaving Caceres we went up the Sepotuba, which in the local Indian dialect means River of Tapirs. This river is only navigable for boats of size when the water is high. It is a swift, fairly clear stream, rushing down from the Plan Alto, the high uplands, through the tropical lowland forest. On the right hand, or western bank, and here and there on the left bank, the forest is broken by natural pastures and meadows, and at one of these places, known as Porto Campo, sixty or seventy miles above the mouth, there is a good-sized cattle- ranch. Here we halted, because the launch, and the two pranchas—native trading-boats with houses on their decks—which it towed, could not carry our entire party and outfit. Accordingly most of the baggage and some of the party were sent ahead to where we were to meet our pack-train, at Tapirapoan. Meanwhile the rest of us made our first camp under tents at Porto Campo, to wait the return of the boats. The tents were placed in a line, with the tent of Colonel Rondon and the tent in which Kermit and I slept, in the middle, beside one another. In front of these two, on tall poles, stood the Brazilian and American flags; and at sunrise and sunset the flags were hoisted and hauled down while the trumpet sounded and all of us stood at attention. 127 128 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuap. v Camp was pitched beside the ranch buildings. In the trees near the tents grew wonderful violet orchids. Many birds were around us; I saw some of them, and Cherrie and Miller many, many more. They ranged from party-coloured macaws, green parrots, and big gregarious cuckoos down to a brilliant green-and-chest- nut kingfisher, five and a quarter inches long, and a tiny orange-and green manakin, smaller than any bird I have ever seen except a hummer. We also saw a bird that really was protectively coloured: a kind of whip-poor-will, which even the sharp-eyed naturalists could only make out because it moved its head. We saw orange-bellied squirrels with showy orange tails. Lizards were common. We killed our first poisonous snake (the second we had seen), an evil lance-headed jararaca that was swimming the river. We also saw a black-and-orange harmless snake, nearly eight feet long, which we were told was akin to the mussurama ; and various other snakes. One day while paddling in a canoe on the river, hoping that the dogs might drive a tapir to us, they drove into the water a couple of small bush-deer instead. There was no point in shooting them ; we caught them with ropes thrown over their heads; for the naturalists needed them as specimens, and all of us needed the meat. One of the men was stung by a single big red maribundi wasp. For twenty-four hours he was in great pain and incapacitated for work. In a lagoon two of the dogs had the tips of their tails bitten of by piranhas as they swam, and the ranch hands told us that in this lagoon one of their hounds had been torn to pieces and com- pletely devoured by the ravenous fish. It was a further illustration of the uncertainty of temper and behaviour of these ferocious little monsters. In other lagoons they had again and again left us and our dogs unmolested. A TAPIR-HUNT 129 They vary locally in aggressiveness just as sharks and crocodiles in different seas and rivers vary. On the morning of January 9th we started out for a tapir-hunt. ‘Tapirs are hunted with canoes, as they dwell in thick jungle and take to the water when hounds follow them. In this region there were ex- tensive papyrus-swamps and big lagoons, back from the river, and often the tapirs fled to these for refuge, throwing off the hounds. In these places it was exceed- ingly difficult to get them ; our best chance was to keep to the river in canoes, and paddle toward the spot in the direction of which the hounds, by the noise, seemed to be heading. We started in four canoes. Three of them were Indian dugouts, very low in the water. The fourth was our Canadian canoe, a beauty; light, safe, roomy, made of thin slats of wood and cement-covered canvas. Colonel Rondon, Fiala with his camera, and I went in this canoe, together with two paddlers. The paddlers were natives of the poorer class. They were good men. The bowsman was of nearly pure white blood; the steersman was of nearly pure negro blood, and was evidently the stronger character and better man of the two. ‘The other canoes carried a couple of fazendeiros, ranchmen, who had come up from Caceres with their dogs. These dugouts were manned by Indian and half- caste paddlers, and the fazendeiros, who were of nearly pure white blood, also at times paddled vigorously. All were dressed in substantially similar clothes, the difference being that those of the camaradas, the poorer men or labourers, were in tatters. In the canoes no man wore anything save a shirt, trousers, and hat, the feet being bare. On horseback they wore long leather leggings which were really simply high, rather flexible boots with the soles off; their spurs were on their tough 9 130 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuap. v bare feet. There was every gradation between and among the nearly pure whites, negroes, and Indians. On the whole, there was most white blood in the upper ranks, and most Indian and negro blood among the camaradas ; but there were exceptions in both classes, and there was no discrimination on account of colour. All alike were courteous and friendly. The hounds were at first carried in two of the dugouts, and then let loose on the banks. We went up-stream for a couple of hours against the swift current, the paddlers making good headway with their pointed paddles—the broad blade of each paddle was tipped with a long point, so that it could be thrust into the mud to keep the low dugout against the bank. The tropical forest came down almost like a wall, the tall trees laced together with vines, and the spaces between their trunks filled with a low, dense jungle. In most places it could only be penetrated by a man with a machete. With few exceptions the trees were unknown to me, and their native names told me nothing. On most of them the foliage was thick ; among the excep- tions were the cecropias, growing by preference on new-formed alluvial soil bare of other trees, whose rather scanty leaf bunches were, as I was informed, the favourite food of sloths. We saw one or two squirrels among the trees, and a family of monkeys. There were few sand-banks in the river, and no water- fowl save an occasional cormorant. But as we pushed along near the shore, where the branches overhung and dipped in the swirling water, we continually roused little flocks of bats. They were hanging from the boughs right over the river, and when our approach roused them they zigzagged rapidly in front of us for a few rods, and then again dove in among the branches. South American tapir from photographs by Etzv., R Sanborn BUSH-DEER 131 At last we landed at a point of ground where there was little jungle, and where the forest was composed of palms and was fairly open. It was a lovely bit of forest. The Colonel strolled off in one direction, returning an hour later with a squirrel for the naturalists. Mean- while Fiala and I went through the palm-wood to a papyrus-swamp. Many trails led through the woods, and especially along the borders of the swamp; and, although their principal makers had evidently been cattle, yet there were in them footprints of both tapir and deer. The tapir makes a footprint much like that of a small rhinoceros, being one of the odd-toed ungulates. We could hear the dogs now and then, evidently scattered and running on various trails. They were a worthless lot of cur-hounds. They would chase tapir or deer or anything else that ran away from them as long as the trail was easy to follow; but they were not staunch, even after animals that fled, and they would have nothing whatever to do with animals that were formidable. While standing by the marsh we heard something coming along one of the game-paths. In a moment a buck of the bigger species of bush-deer appeared, a very pretty and graceful creature. It stopped and darted back as soon as it saw us, giving us no chance for a shot ; but in another moment we caught glimpses of it running by at full speed, back among the palms. I covered an opening between two tree-trunks. By good luck the buck appeared in the right place, giving me just time to hold well ahead of him and fire. At the report he went down in a heap, the “ umbrella-pointed” bullet going in at one shoulder, and, ranging forward, break- ing the neck. The leaden portion of the bullet, in the proper mushroom or umbrella shape, stopped under the 132 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cnap. v neck skin on the farther side. It is a very effective bullet. Miller particularly wished specimens of these various species of bush-deer, because their mutual relationships have not yet been satisfactorily worked out. This was an old buck. The antlers were single spikes, five or six inches long: they were old and white and would soon have been shed. In the stomach were the remains of both leaves and grasses, but especially the former ; the buck was both a browser and grazer. There were also seeds, but no berries or nuts such as I have some- times found in deers’ stomachs. This species, which is abundant in this neighbourhood, is solitary in its habits, not going in herds. At this time the rut was past, the bucks no longer sought the does, the fawns had not been born, and the yearlings had left their mothers; so that each animal usually went by itself. When chased they were very apt to take to the water. This instinct of taking to the water, by the way, is quite explicable as regards both deer and tapir, for it affords them refuge against their present-day natural foes, but it is a little puzzling to see the jaguar readily climbing trees to escape dogs; for ages have passed since there were in its habitat any natural foes from which it needed to seek safety in trees. But it is possible that the habit has been kept alive by its seeking refuge in them on occasion from the big peccaries, which are among the beasts on which it ordinarily preys. We hung the buck ina tree. The Colonel returned, and not long afterward one of the paddlers who had been watching the river called out to us that there was a tapir in the water, a good distance up-stream, and that two of the other boats were after it. We jumped into the canoe, and the two paddlers dug their blades in A SUCCESSFUL SHOT 133 the water as they drove her against the strong current, edging over for the opposite bank. The tapir was coming down-stream at a great rate, only its queer head above water, while the dugouts were closing rapidly on it, the paddlers uttering loud cries. As the tapir turned slightly to one side or the other the long, slightly upturned snout and the strongly pronounced arch of the crest along the head and upper neck gave it a marked and unusual aspect. I could not shoot, for it was directly in line with one of the pursuing dugouts. Suddenly it dived, the snout being slightly curved downward as it did so. There was no trace of it; we gazed eagerly in all directions; the dugout in front came alongside our canoe and the paddlers rested, their paddles ready. Then we made out the tapir clambering up the bank. It had dived at right angles to the course it was following and swum under water to the very edge of the shore, rising under the over-hanging tree-branches at a point where a drinking-trail for game led down a break in the bank. The branches partially hid it, and it was in deep shadow, so that it did not offer a very good shot. My bullet went into its body too far back, and the tapir disappeared in the forest at a gallop as if unhurt, although the bullet really secured it, by making it unwilling to trust to its speed and leave the neigh- bourhood of the water. Three or four of the hounds were by this time swimming the river, leaving the others yelling on the opposite side; and as soon as the swimmers reached the shore they were put on the tapir’s trail and galloped after it, giving tongue. In a couple of minutes we saw the tapir take to the water far up- stream, and after it we went as fast as the paddles could urge us through the water. We were not in time to head it, but fortunately some of the dogs had come 134 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuHap. v down to the river’s edge at the very point where the tapir was about to land, and turned it back. Two or three of the dogs were swimming. We were more than half the breadth of the river away from the tapir, and some- what down-stream, when it dived. It made an astonish- ingly long swim beneath the water this time, almost as if it had been a hippopotamus, for it passed completely under our canoe and rose between us and the hither bank. I shot it, the bullet going into its brain, while it was thirty or forty yards from shore. It sank at once. There was now nothing to do but wait until the body floated. I feared that the strong current would roll it down-stream over the river-bed ; but my companions assured me that this was not so, and that the body would remain where it was until it rose, which would be in an hour or two. They were right, except as to the time. For over a couple of hours we paddled, or anchored ourselves by clutching branches close to the spot, or else drifted down a mile and paddled up again near the shore, to see if the body had caught anywhere. Then we crossed the river and had lunch at the lovely natural picnic-ground where the buck was hung up. We had very nearly given up the tapir when it sud- denly floated only a few rods from where it had sunk. With no little difficulty the big, round black body was hoisted into the canoe, and we all turned our prows down-stream. The skies had been lowering for some time, and now—too late to interfere with the hunt or cause us any annoyance—a heavy downpour of rain came on and beat upon us. Little we cared, as the canoe raced forward, with the tapir and the buck lying in the bottom, and a dry, comfortable camp ahead of us. When we reached camp, and Father Zahm saw the bush deer Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon with e hung the buck in a tree W From a photograph by Fiala AN INTERESTING CAMP 135 tapir, he reminded me of something I had completely forgotten. When, some six years previously, he had spoken to me in the White House about taking this South American trip, I had answered that I could not, as I intended to go to Africa; but added that I hoped some day to go to South America, and that if I did so T should try to shoot both a jaguar and a tapir, as they were the characteristic big-game animals of the country. “Well,” said Father Zahm, “now you’ve shot them both!” The storm continued heavy until after sunset. Then the rain stopped, and the full moon broke through the cloud-rack. Father Zahm and I walked up and down in the moonlight, talking of many things, from Dante, and our own plans for the future, to the deeds and the wanderings of the old-time Spanish conquista- dores in their search for the Gilded King, and of the Portuguese adventurers who then divided with them the mastery of the oceans and of the unknown continents beyond. This was an attractive and interesting camp in more ways than one. The vaqueiros with their wives and families were housed on the two sides of the field in which our tents were pitched. On one side was a big, whitewashed, tile-roofed house in which the foreman dwelt—an olive-skinned, slightly built, wiry man, with an olive-skinned wife and eight as pretty, fair-haired children as one could wish to see. He usually went barefoot, and his manners were not merely good but distinguished. Corrals and out-buildings were near this big house. On the opposite side of the field stood the row of steep-roofed, palm-thatched huts in which the ordinary cow-hands lived with their dusky helpmeets and children. Each night from these palm-thatched quarters we heard the faint sounds of a music that 136 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuap. Vv went far back of civilization to a savage ancestry near by in point of time and otherwise immeasurably remote ; for through the still, hot air, under the brilliant moon- light, we heard the monotonous throbbing of a tomtom drum, and the twanging of some odd-stringed instru- ment. The small black turkey-buzzards, here always called crows, were as tame as chickens near the big house, walking on the ground or perched in the trees beside the corral, waiting for the offal of the slaughtered cattle. Two palm-trees near our tent were crowded with the long, hanging nests of one of the cacique orioles. We lived well, with plenty of tapir beef, which was good, and venison of the bush-deer, which was excellent ; and as much ordinary beef as we wished, and fresh milk, too—a rarity in this country. There were very few mosquitoes, and everything was as comfortable as possible. The tapir I killed was a big one. I did not wish to kill another, unless, of course, it became advisable to do so for food ; whereas I did wish to get some speci- mens of the big, white-lipped peccary, the “ queixa” (pronounced “ cashada ”) of the Brazilians, which would make our collection of the big mammals of the Brazilian forests almost complete. ‘The remaining members of the party killed two or three more tapirs. One was a bull, full grown but very much smaller than the animal I had killed. The hunters said that this was a distinct kind. The skull and skin were sent back with the other specimens to the American Museum, where, after due examination and comparison, its specific identity will be established. ‘Tapirs are solitary beasts. Two are rarely found together, except in the case of a cow and and its spotted and streaked calf. They live in dense cover, usually lying down in the daytime, and at night THE TAPIR PEDIGREE 137 coming out to feed, and going to the river or to some lagoon to bathe and swim. From this camp Sigg took Lieutenant Lyra back to Caceres to get something that had been overlooked. They went in a rowboat to which the motor had been attached, and at night on the way back almost ran over a tapir that was swimming. But in unfrequented places, tapirs both feed and bathe during the day. The stomach of the one I shot con- tained big palm-nuts ; they had been swallowed with- out enough mastication to break the kernel, the outer pulp being what the tapir prized. Tapirs gallop well, and their tough hide and wedge shape enable them to go at speed through very dense cover. They try to stamp on, and even to bite, a foe, but are only clumsy fighters. The tapir is a very archaic type of ungulate, not un- like the non-specialized beasts of the oligocene. From some such ancestral type the highly specialized one-toed modern horse has evolved, while during the uncounted ages that saw the horse thus develop, the tapir has con- tinued substantially unchanged. Originally the tapirs dwelt in the northern hemisphere, but there they gradually died out, the more specialized horse, and even for long ages the rhinoceros, persisting after they had vanished ; and nowadays the surviving tapirs are found in Malaysia and South America, far from their original home. The relations of the horse and tapir in the paleontological history of South America are very curious. Both were, geologically speaking, compara- tively recent immigrants, and if they came at different dates it is almost certain that the horse came later. The horse for an age or two, certainly for many hundreds of thousands of years, throve greatly, and developed not only several different species, but even 138 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cwap. v different genera. It was much the most highly special- ized of the two, and in the other continental regions where both were found, the horse outlasted the tapir. But in South America the tapir outlasted the horse. From unknown causes the various genera and species of horses died out, while the tapir has persisted. The highly specialized, highly developed beasts, which repre- sented such a full evolutionary development, died out, while their less specialized remote kinsfolk, which had not developed, clung to life and throve; and this, although the direct reverse was occurring in North America and in the Old World. It is one of the in- numerable and at present insoluble problems in the history of life on our planet. I spent a couple of days of hard work in getting the big white-lipped peccaries—white-lipped being rather a misnomer, as the entire under jaw and lower cheek are white. They were said to be found on the other side of, and some distance back from, the river. Colonel Rondon had sent out one of our attendants, an old follower of his, a full-blood Parecis Indian, to look for tracks. This was an excellent man, who dressed and behaved just like the other good men we had, and was called Antonio Parecis. He found the tracks of a herd of thirty or forty cashadas, and the following morning we started after them. On the first day we killed nothing. We were rather too large a party, for one or two of the visiting fazen- deiros came along with their dogs. I doubt whether these men very much wished to overtake our game, for the big peccary is a murderous foe of dogs (and is sometimes dangerous to men). One of their number frankly refused to come or to let his dogs come, explain- ing that the fierce wild swine were “ very badly brought daytyy &q yvssojoys v moLy Joep ysnq pure ‘Arvs0ed paddi-ainya ‘dey, quny s,Avp & WOIZ UINyar oy], AFTER WHITE-LIPPED PECCARY 139 up ” (a literal translation of his words), and that respect- able dogs and men ought not to go near them. The other fazendeiros merely feared for their dogs ; a ground- less fear, I believe, as I do not think that the dogs could by any exertion have been dragged into dangerous proximity with such foes. The ranch foreman, Bene- detto, came with us, and two or three other camaradas, including Antonio, the Parecis Indian. The horses were swum across the river, each being led beside a dugout. ‘Then we crossed with the dogs; our horses were saddled, and we started. It was a picturesque cavalcade. The native hunters, of every shade from white to dark copper, all wore leather leggings that left the soles of their feet bare, and on their bare heels wore spurs with wheels four inches across. They went in single file, for no other mode of travel was possible; and the two or three leading men kept their machetes out, and had to cut every yard of our way while we were in the forest. The hunters rode little stallions, and their hounds were gelded. Most of the time we were in forest or swampy jungle. Part of the time we crossed or skirted marshy plains. In one of them a herd of half-wild cattle was feeding. Herons, storks, ducks, and ibises were in these marshes, and we saw one flock of lovely roseate spoonbills. In one grove the fig-trees were killing the palms, just as in Africa they kill the sandal-wood trees. In the gloom of this grove there were no flowers, no bushes ; the air was heavy ; the ground was brown with moulder- ing leaves. Almost every palm was serving as a prop for a fig-tree. The fig-trees were in every stage of growth. The youngest ones merely ran up the palms as vines. In the next stage the vine had thickened and was send- 140 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS _[cuHap. v ing out shoots, wrapping the palm stem in a deadly hold. Some of the shoots were thrown round the stem like the tentacles of an immense cuttlefish. Others looked like claws, that were hooked into every crevice, and round every projection. In the stage beyond this the palm had been killed, and its dead carcass appeared between the big, winding vine-trunks ; and later the palm had disappeared, and the vines had united into a great fig-tree. Water stood in black pools at the foot of the murdered trees, and of the trees that had mur- dered them. There was something sinister and evil in the dark stillness of the grove ; it seemed as if sentient beings had writhed themselves round, and were strangling other sentient beings. We passed through wonderfully beautiful woods of tall palms, the ouaouaca palm—wawasa palm, as it should be spelled in English. The trunks rose tall and strong and slender, and the fronds were branches twenty or thirty feet long, with the many long, narrow green blades starting from the midrib at right angles in pairs. Round the ponds stood stately burity palms, rising like huge columns, with great branches that looked like fans, as the long, stiff blades radiated from the end of the midrib. One tree was gorgeous with the brilliant hues of a flock of parti-coloured macaws. Green parrots flew shrieking overhead. Now and then we were bitten and stung by the venomous fire-ants, and ticks crawled upon us. Once we were assailed by more serious foes, in the shape of a nest of maribundi wasps, not the biggest kind, but about the size of our hornets. We were at the time passing through dense jungle, under tall trees, in a spot where the down timber, holes, tangled creepers, and thorns made the going difficult. The leading men were not BERNI FLIES 141 assailed, although they were now and then cutting the trail. Colonel Rondon and I were in the middle of the column, and the swarm attacked us; both of us were badly stung on the face, neck, and hands, the Colonel even more severely than I was. He wheeled and rode to the rear and I to the front; our horses were stung too; and we went at a rate that a moment previously I would have deemed impossible over such ground. At the close of the day, when we were almost back at the river, the dogs killed a jaguar kitten. ‘There was no trace of the mother. Some accident must have befallen her, and the kitten was trying to shift for her- self. She was very emaciated. In her stomach were the remains of a pigeon and some tendons from the skeleton or dried carcass of some big animal. The loathsome berni flies, which deposit eggs in living beings—cattle, dogs, monkeys, rodents, men—had been at it. There were seven huge, white grubs making big abscess-like swellings over its eyes. These flies deposit their grubs in men. In 1909, on Colonel Rondon’s hardest trip, every man of the party had from one to five grubs deposited in him, the fly acting with great speed, and driving its ovipositor through ugh clothing. The grubs cause torture; but a couple of cross cuts with a lancet permit the loathsome creatures to be squeezed out. In these forests the multitude of insects that bite, sting, devour, and prey upon other creatures, often with accompaniments of atrocious suffering, passes belief. The very pathetic myth of “ beneficent nature ” could not deceive even the least wise being if he once saw for himself the iron cruelty of life in the tropics. Of course “nature”—in common parlance a wholly inaccurate term, by the way, especially when used as if to express a single entity—is entirely ruthless, no less so as regards 142 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuwap. v types than as regards individuals, and entirely indifferent to good or evil, and works out her ends or no ends with utter disregard of pain and woe. The following morning at sunrise we started again. This time only Colonel Rondon and I went with Bene- detto and Antonio the Indian. We brought along four dogs, which, it was fondly hoped, might chase the cashadas. Two of them disappeared on the track of a tapir, and we saw them no more; one of the others promptly tled when we came across the tracks of our game, and would not even venture after them in our company ; the remaining one did not actually run away, and occasionally gave tongue, but could not be per- suaded to advance unless there was a man ahead of him. However, Colonel Rondon, Benedetto, and Antonio formed a trio of hunters who could do fairly well without dogs. After four hours of riding, Benedetto, who was in the lead, suddenly stopped and pointed downward. We were riding along a grassy interval between masses of forest, and he had found the fresh track of a herd of big peccaries crossing from left to right. There were appar- ently thirty or forty in the herd. The small peccaries go singly or in small parties, and when chased take refuge in holes or hollow logs, where they show valiant fight ; but the big peccaries go in herds of considerable size, and are so truculent that they are reluctant to run, and prefer either to move slowly off chattering their tusks and grunting, or else actually to charge. Where much persecuted the survivors gradually grow more willing to run, but their instinct is not to run, but to trust to their truculence and their mass-action for safety. They inflict a fearful bite and frequently kill dogs. They often charge the hunters, and I have heard of men being A HERD OF PECCARIES 143 badly wounded by them, while almost every man who hunts them often is occasionally forced to scramble up a tree to avoid a charge. But I have never heard of a man being killed by them. They sometimes surround the tree in which the man has taken refuge, and keep him up it. Cherrie, on one occasion in Costa Rica, was thus kept up a tree for several hours by a great herd of three or four hundred of these peccaries; and _ this although he killed several of them. Ordinarily, how- ever, after making their charge, they do not turn, but pass on out of sight. Their great foe is the jaguar, but unless he exercises much caution they will turn the tables on him. Cherrie, also, in Costa Rica, came on the body of a jaguar, which had evidently been killed by a herd of peccaries some twenty-four hours pre- viously. The ground was trampled up by their hoofs, and the carcass was rent and slit into pieces. Benedetto, as soon as we discovered the tracks, slipped off his horse, changed his leggings for sandals, threw his rifle over his arm, and took the trail of the herd, followed by the only dog which would accompany him. The peccaries had gone into a broad belt of forest, with a marsh on the farther side. At first Antonio led the Colonel and me, all of us on horseback, at a canter round this belt to the marsh side, thinking the peccaries had gone almost through it. But we could hear nothing. The dog only occasionally barked, and then not loudly. Finally we heard a shot. Benedetto had found the herd, which showed no fear of him ; he had backed out and fired a signal shot. We all three went into the forest on foot toward where the shot had been fired. It was dense jungle and stiflingly hot. We could not see clearly for more than a few feet, or move easily without free use of the machetes. 144 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [caap. v Soon we heard the ominous groaning of the herd, in front of us, and almost on every side. ‘Then Benedetto joined us, and the dog appeared in the rear. We moved slowly forward, toward the sound of the fierce moaning grunts which were varied at times by a castanet chattering of the tusks. Then we dimly made out the dark forms of the peccaries moving very slowly to the left. My companions each chose a tree to climb at need and pointed out one for me. I fired at the half- seen form of a hog through the vines, leaves, and branches; the Colonel fired ; I fired three more shots at other hogs; and the Indian also fired. The peccaries did not charge ; walking and trotting, with bristles erect, groaning and clacking their tusks, they disappeared into the jungle. Wecould not see one of them clearly ; and not one was left dead. But a few paces on we came across one of my wounded ones, standing at bay by a palm trunk ; and [ killed it forthwith. The dog would not even trail the wounded ones ; but here Antonio came to the front. With eyes almost as quick and sure as those of a wild beast he had watched after every shot, and was able to tell the results in each case. He said that in addition to the one I had just killed I had wounded two others so seriously that he did not think they would go far, and that Colonel Rondon and he himself had each badly wounded one; and, moreover, he showed the trails each wounded animal had taken. The event justified him. In a few minutes we found my second one dead. Then we found Antonio’s. Then we found my third one alive and at bay, and I killed it with another bullet. Finally we found the Colonel’s. I told him I should ask the authorities of the American museum to mount his and one or two of mine in a group, to commemorate our hunting together. Kermit Roosevelt From a photograph by Fiala BRAZILIAN DOGS 145 If we had not used crippling rifles the peccaries might have gotten away, for in the dark jungle, with the masses of intervening leaves and branches, it was im- possible to be sure of placing each bullet properly in the half-seen moving beast. We found where the herd had wallowed in the mud. The stomachs of the peccaries we killed contained wild figs, palm nuts, and bundles of root fibres. The dead beasts were covered with ticks. They were at least twice the weight of the smaller peccaries. On the ride home we saw a buck of the small species of bush-deer, not half the size of the kind I had already shot. It was only a patch of red in the bush, a good distance off, but I was lucky enough to hit it. In spite of its small size it was a full-grown male, of a species we had not yet obtained. The antlers had recently been shed, and the new antler growth had just begun. A great jabiru stork let us ride by him a hundred and fifty yards off without thinking it worth while to take flight. This day we saw many of the beautiful violet orchids ; and in the swamps were multitudes of flowers, red, yellow, lilac, of which I did not know the names. T alluded above to the queer custom these people in the interior of Brazil have of gelding their hunting-dogs. This absurd habit is doubtless the chief reason why there are so few hounds worth their salt in the more serious kinds of hunting, where the quarry is the jaguar or big peccary. Thus far we had seen but one dog as good as the ordinary cougar hound or bear hound, in such packs as those with which I had hunted in the Rockies and in the cane-brakes of the lower Mississippi. It can hardly be otherwise when every dog that shows himself worth anything is promptly put out of the cate- gory of breeders—the theory apparently being that the 10 146 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS ([cuap. v dog will then last longer. All the breeding is from worth- less dogs, and no dog of proved worth leaves descendants. The country along this river is a fine natural cattle country, and some day it will surely see a great develop- ment. It was opened to development by Colonel Rondon only five or six years ago. Already an occasional cattle-ranch is to be found along the banks. When railroads are built into these interior portions of Matto Grosso the whole region will grow and thrive amazingly—and so will the railroads. The growth will not be merely material. An immense amount will be done in education; using the word education in its broadest and most accurate sense, as applying to both mind and spirit, to both the child and the man. Colonel Rondon is not merely an explorer. He has been, and is now, a leader in the movement for the vital betterment of his people, the people of Matto Grosso. The poorer people of the back country every- where suffer because of the harsh and improper laws of debt. In practice these laws have resulted in establish- ing a system of peonage, such as has grown up here and there in our own nation. A radical change is needed in this matter; and the Colonel is fighting for the change. In school matters the Colonel has precisely the ideas of our wisest and most advanced men and women in the United States. Cherrie—who is not only an exceedingly efficient naturalist and explorer in the tropics, but is also a thoroughly good citizen at home— is the chairman of the school board of the town of Newfane, in Vermont. He and the Colonel, and Kermit and J, talked over school matters at length, and were in hearty accord as to the vital educational needs of both Brazil and the United States: the need of combining industrial with purely mental training, and the need of THE SEPOTUBA RIVER 147 having the widespread popular education, which is and must be supported and paid for by the government, made a purely governmental and absolutely non-sectarian function, administered by the state alone, without interference with, nor furtherance of, the beliefs of any reputable church. The Colonel is also head of the Indian service of Brazil, being what corresponds roughly with our Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Here also he is taking the exact view that is taken in the United States by the staunchest and wisest friends of the Indians. The Indians must be treated with intelligent and sympathetic understanding, no less than with justice and firmness ; and until they become citizens, absorbed into the general body politic, they must be the wards of the nation, and not of any private associa- tion, lay or clerical, no matter how well-meaning. The Sepotuba River was scientifically explored and mapped for the first time by Colonel Rondon in 1908, as head of the Brazilian Telegraphic Commission. This was during the second year of his exploration and opening of the unknown northwestern wilderness of Matto Grosso. Most of this wilderness had never previously been trodden by the foot of a civilized man. Not only were careful maps made and much other scientific work accomplished, but posts were established and telegraph- lines constructed. When Colonel Rondon began the work he was a major. He was given two promotions, to lieutenant-colonel and colonel, while absent in the wilderness. His longest and most important exploring trip, and the one fraught with most danger and hardship, was begun by him in 1909, on May 3, the anniversary of the discovery of Brazil. He left Tapirapoan on that day, and he reached the Madeira River on Christmas, December 25, of the same year, having descended the 148 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuap. v Gy-Parand. The mouth of this river had long been known, but its upper course for half its length was absolutely unknown when Rondon descended it. Among those who took part under him in this piece of explora- tion were the present Captain Amilcar and Lieutenant Lyra; and two better or more efficient men for such wilderness work it would be impossible to find. They acted as his two chief assistants on our trip. In 1909 the party exhausted all their food, including even the salt, by August. For the last four months they lived exclusively on the game they killed, on fruits, and on wild honey. Their equipage was what the men could carry on their backs. By the time the party reached the Madeira they were worn out by fatigue, exposure, and semi-starvation, and their enfeebled bodies were racked by fever. The work of exploration accomplished by Colonel Rondon and his associates during these years was as remarkable as, and in its results even more important than, any similar work undertaken elsewhere on the globe at or about the same time. Its value was recog- nized in Brazil. It received no recognition by the geo- graphical societies of Europe or the United States. The work done by the original explorers of such a wilderness necessitates the undergoing of untold hardship and danger. Their successors, even their immediate successors, have a relatively easy time. Soon the road becomes so well beaten that it can be traversed without hardship by any man who does not venture from it— although if he goes off into the wilderness for even a day, hunting or collecting, he will have a slight taste of what his predecessors endured. The wilderness explored by Colonel Rondon is not yet wholly subdued, and still holds menace to human life. At Caceres he received BOUND FOR TAPIRAPOAN 149 notice of the death of one of his gallant subordinates, Captain Cardozo. He died from beriberi, far out in the wilderness along our proposed line of march. Colonel Rondon also received news that a boat ascend- ing the Gy-Parané, to carry provisions to meet those of our party who were to descend that stream, had been upset, the provisions lost, and three men drowned. The risk and hardship are such that the ordinary men, the camaradas, do not like to go into the wilderness. The men who go with the Telegraphic Commission on the rougher and wilder work are paid seven times as much as they earn in civilization. On this trip of ours Colonel Rondon met with much difficulty in securing someone who could cook. He asked the cook on the little steamer Nyoac to go with us; but the cook with unaffected horror responded: “ Senhor, J have never done anything to deserve punishment !” Five days after leaving us, the launch, with one of the native trading-boats lashed alongside, returned. On the 13th we broke camp, loaded ourselves and all our belongings on the launch and the house-boat, and started up-stream for Tapirapoan. All told there were about thirty men, with five dogs and tents, bedding and provisions ; fresh beef, growing rapidly less fresh ; skins —all and everything jammed together. It rained most of the first day and part of the first night. After that the weather was generally overcast and pleasant for travelling; but sometimes rain and torrid sunshine alternated. The cooking—and it was good cooking—was done at a funny little open-air fire- place, with two or three cooking-pots placed at the stern of the house-boat. The fireplace was a platform of earth, taken from ant-hills, and heaped and spread on the boards of the 150 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cwap. v boat. Around it the dusky cook worked with philo- sophic solemnity in rain and shine. Our attendants, friendly souls with skins of every shade and hue, slept most of the time, curled up among boxes, bundles, and slabs of beef. An enormous land-turtle was tethered toward the bow of the house-boat. When the men slept too near it, it made futile efforts to scramble over them; and in return now and then one of them gravely used it for a seat. Slowly the throbbing engine drove the launch and its unwieldy side-partner against the swift current. The river had risen. We made about a mile and a half an hour. Ahead of us the brown water street stretched in curves between endless walls of dense tropical forest. It was like passing through a gigantic greenhouse. Wawasa and burity palms, cecropias, huge figs, feathery bamboos, strange yellow-stemmed trees, low trees with enormous leaves, tall trees with foliage as delicate as lace, trees with buttressed trunks, trees with boles rising smooth and straight to lofty heights, all woven together by a tangle of vines, crowded down to the edge of the river. Their drooping branches hung down to the water, forming a screen through which it was impossible to see the bank, and exceedingly difficult to penetrate to the bank. Rarely one of them showed flowers—large white blossoms, or small red or yellow blossoms. More often the lilac flowers of the begonia-vine made large patches of colour. Innumerable epiphytes covered the limbs, and even grew on the roughened trunks. We saw little bird life—a darter now and then, and king- fishers flitting from perch to perch. At long intervals we passed a ranch. At one the large, red-tiled, white- washed house stood on a grassy slope behind mango- trees. The wooden shutters were thrown back from the TROPICAL RIVER TRAVEL 151 unglazed windows, and the big rooms were utterly bare— not a book, not an ornament. A palm, loaded with scores of the pendulous nests of the troupials, stood near the door. Behind were orange-trees and coffee-plants, and near by fields of bananas, rice, and tobacco. The sallow foreman was courteous and hospitable. His dark-skinned women-folk kept in the furtive background. Like most of the ranches, it was owned by a company with head- quarters at Caceres. The trip was pleasant and interesting, although there was not much to do on the boat. It was too crowded to move around save with a definite purpose. We enjoyed the scenery ; we talked—in English, Portu- guese, bad French, and broken German. Some of us wrote. Fiala made sketches of improved tents, ham- mocks, and other field equipment, suggested by what he had already seen. Some of us read books. Colonel Rondon, neat, trim, alert, and soldierly, studied a standard work on applied geographical astronomy. Father Zahm read a novel by Fogazzaro. Kermit read Camoens and a couple of Brazilian novels, “ O Guarani ” and“ Innocencia.” My own reading varied from ‘Quentin Durward” and Gibbon to the “Chanson de Roland.” Miller took out his little pet owl Moses, from the basket in which Moses dwelt, and gave him food and water. Moses crooned and chuckled gratefully when he was stroked and tickled. Late the first evening we moored to the bank by a little fazenda of the poorer type. The houses were of palm-leaves. Even the walls were made of the huge fronds or leafy branches of the wawasa palm, stuck upright in the ground, and the blades plaited together. Some of us went ashore. Some stayed on the boats. There were no mosquitoes, the weather was not 152 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuap. v oppressively hot, and we slept well. By five o'clock next morning we had each drunk a cup of delicious Brazilian coffee, and the boats were under way. All day we steamed slowly up-stream. We passed two or three fazendas. At one, where we halted to get milk, the trees were overgrown with pretty little yellow orchids. At dark we moored at a spot where there were no branches to prevent our placing the boats directly alongside the bank. There were hardly any mosquitoes. Most of the party took their hammocks ashore, and the camp was pitched amid singularly beau- tiful surroundings. The trees were wawasa palms, some with the fronds cresting very tall trunks, some with the fronds—seemingly longer—rising almost from the ground. The fronds were of great length ; some could not have been less than fifty feet long. Bushes and tall grass, dew-drenched and glittering with the green of emeralds, grew in the open spaces between. We left at sunrise the following morning. One of the sailors had strayed inland. He got turned round and could not find the river; and we started before discovering his absence. We stopped at once, and with much diffi- culty he forced his way through the vine-laced and thorn-guarded jungle toward the sound of the launch’s engines and of the bugle which was blown. In this dense jungle, when the sun is behind clouds, a man without a compass who strays a hundred yards from the river may readily become hopelessly lost. As we ascended the river the wawasa palms became constantly more numerous. At this point, for many miles, they gave their own character to the forest on the river-banks. Everywhere their long, curving fronds rose among the other trees, and in places their lofty trunks made them hold their heads higher than the TROPICAL FOLIAGE 153 other trees. But they were never as tall as the giants among the ordinary trees. On one towering palm we noticed a mass of beautiful violet orchids growing from the side of the trunk, half-way to the top. On another big tree, not a palm, which stood in a little opening, there hung well over a hundred troupials’ nests. Be- sides two or three small ranches, we this day passed a large ranch. The various houses and sheds, all palm- thatched, stood by the river in a big space of cleared ground, dotted with wawasa palms. A native house- boat was moored by the bank. Women and children looked from the unglazed windows of the houses ; men stood in front of them. The biggest house was enclosed by a stockade of palm-logs, thrust end-on into the ground. Cows and oxen grazed round about; and carts with solid wheels, each wheel made of a single dise of wood, were tilted on their poles. We made our noon-day halt on an island where very tall trees grew, bearing fruits that were pleasant to the taste. Other trees on the island were covered with rich red and yellow blossoms; and masses of delicate blue flowers and of star-shaped white flowers grew underfoot. Hither and thither across the surface of the river flew swallows, with so much white in their plumage that, as they flashed in the sun, they seemed to have snow- white bodies borne by dark wings. ‘The current of the river grew swifter; there were stretches of broken water that were almost rapids; the labouring engine strained and sobbed as, with increasing difficulty, it urged forward the launch and her clumsy consort. At nightfall we moored beside the bank, where the forest was open enough to permit a comfortable camp. ‘That night the ants ate large holes in Miller’s mosquito- netting, and almost devoured his socks and shoe-laces. 154 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cwar. v At sunrise we again started. There were occasional stretches of swift, broken water, almost rapids, in the river ; everywhere the current was swift, and our pro- gress was slow. The prancha was towed at the end of a hawser, and her crew poled. Even thus we only just made the riffle in more than one case. Two or three times cormorants and snake-birds, perched on snags in the river or on trees alongside it, permitted the boat to come within a few yards. In one piece of high forest we saw a party of toucans, conspicuous even among the tree-tops, because of their huge bills and the leisurely expertness with which they crawled, climbed, and hopped among the branches. We went by several fazendas. Shortly before noon—January 16—we reached Tapira- poan, the headquarters of the Telegraphic Commission. It was an attractive place, on the river-front, and it was gaily bedecked with flags, not only those of Brazil and the United States, but of all the other American republics, in our honour. There was a large, green square, with trees standing in the middle of it. On one side of this square were the buildings of the Tele- graphic Commission, on the other those of a big ranch, of which this is the headquarters. In addition, there were stables, sheds, out-houses, and corrals ; and there were cultivated fields near by. Milch cows, beef-cattle, oxen, and mules wandered almost at will. There were two or three waggons and carts, and a traction auto- mobile, used in the construction of the telegraph-line, but not available in the rainy season, at the time of our trip. Here we were to begin our trip overland, on pack- mules and pack-oxen, scores of which had been gathered to meet us. Several days were needed to apportion the Two pranchas being pulled by launch with our baggage and provisions The prancha was towed at the end of a hawser and her crew poled From a photograph by Harper WORK FOR NATURALISTS 155 loads and arrange for the several divisions, in which it was necessary that so large a party should attempt the long wilderness march, through a country where there was not much food for man or beast, and where it was always possible to run into a district in which fatal cattle or horse diseases were prevalent. Fiala, with his usual efficiency, took charge of handling the outfit of the American portion of the expedition, with Sigg as an active and useful assistant. Harper, who, like the others, worked with whole-hearted zeal and cheerful- ness, also helped him, except when he was engaged in helping the naturalists. The two latter, Cherrie and Miller, had so far done the hardest and the best work of the expedition. They had collected about a thousand birds and two hundred and fifty mammals. It was not probable that they would do as well during the re- mainder of our trip, for we intended thenceforth to halt as little, and march as steadily, as the country, the weather, and the condition of our means of transporta- tion permitted. I kept continually wishing that they had more time in which to study the absorbingly inter- esting life-histories of the beautiful and wonderful beasts and birds we were all the time seeing. Every first-rate museum must still employ competent collectors; but I think that a museum could now confer most last- ing benefit, and could do work of most permanent good, by sending out into the immense wildernesses, where wild nature is at her best, trained observers with the gift of recording what they have observed. Such men should be collectors, for collecting is still necessary ; but they should also, and indeed primarily, be able them- selves to see, and to set vividly before the eyes of others, the full life-histories of the creatures that dwell in the waste spaces of the world. 156 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuar. v At this point both Cherrie and Miller collected a number of mammals and birds which they had not previously obtained ; whether any were new to science could only be determined after the specimens reached the American museum. While making the round of his small mammal traps one morning, Miller encountered an army of the formidable foraging-ants. The species was a large black one, moving with a well-extended front. These ants, sometimes called army-ants, like the driver-ants of Africa, move in big bodies and destroy or make prey of every living thing that is unable or un- willing to get out of their path in time. They run fast, and everything runs away from their advance. Insects form their chief prey; and the most dangerous and aggressive lower-life creatures make astonishingly little resistance to them. Miller’s attention was first attracted to this army of ants by noticing a big centipede, nine or ten inches long, trying to flee before them. A number of ants were biting it, and it writhed at each bite, but did not try to use its long curved jaws against its assailants. On other occasions he saw big scorpions and big hairy spiders trying to escape in the same way, and showing the same helpless inability to injure their ravenous foes, or to defend themselves. The ants climb trees to a great height, much higher than most birds’ nests, and at once kill and tear to pieces any fledglings in the nests they reach. But they are not as common as some writers seem to imagine ; days may elapse before their armies are encountered, and doubtless most nests are never visited or threatened by them. In some instances it seems likely that the birds save themselves and their young in other ways. Some nests are in- accessible. From others it is probable that the parents remove the young. Miller once, in Guiana, had been DEPREDATIONS OF ANTS 157 watching for some days a nest of ant-wrens which con- tained young. Going thither one morning, he found the tree, and the nest itself, swarming with foraging-ants. Heat first thought that the fledglings had been devoured, but he soon saw the parents, only about thirty yards off, with food in their beaks. They were engaged in entering a dense part of the jungle, coming out again without food in their beaks, and soon reappearing once more with food. Miller never found their new nests, but their actions left him certain that they were feeding their young, which they must have themselves removed from the old nest. These ant-wrens hover in front of and over the columns of foraging-ants, feeding not only on the other insects aroused by the ants, but on the ants themselves. This fact has been doubted; but Miller has shot them with the ants in their bills and in their stomachs. Dragon-flies, in numbers, often hover over the columns, darting down at them; Miller could not be certain he had seen them actually seizing the ants, but this was his belief. I have myself seen these ants plunder a nest of the dangerous and highly aggressive wasps, while the wasps buzzed about in great excitement, but seemed unable effectively to retaliate. I have also seen them clear a sapling tenanted by their kinsmen, the poisonous red ants, or fire-ants ; the fire-ants fought and Thave no doubt injured or killed some of their swarming and active black foes; but the latter quickly did away with them. I have only come across black foraging- ants; but there are red species. They attack human beings precisely as they attack all animals, and precipitate flight is the only resort. Around our camp here butterflies of gorgeous colour- ing swarmed, and there were many fungi as delicately shaped and tinted as flowers, The scents in the woods 158 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuap. v were wonderful. There were many whip-poor-wills, or rather Brazilian birds related to them; they uttered at intervals through the night a succession of notes sug- gesting both those of our whip-poor-will and those of our big chuck-will’s-widow of the Gulf States, but not identical with either. There were other birds which were nearly akin to familiar birds of the United States: a dull-coloured ecatbird, a dull-coloured robin, and a sparrow belonging to the same genus as our common song-sparrow and sweetheart sparrow ; Miller had heard this sparrow singing by day and night, fourteen thousand feet up on the Andes, and its song suggested the songs of both of our sparrows. There were doves and wood- peckers of various species. Other birds bore no re- semblance to any of ours. One honey-creeper was a perfect little gem, with plumage that was black, purple, and turquoise, and brilliant scarlet feet. Two of the birds which Cherrie and Miller procured were of extra- ordinary nesting habits. One, a nunlet, in shape re- sembles a short-tailed bluebird. It is plumbeous, with a fulvous belly and white tail coverts. It is a stupid little bird, and does not like to fly away even when shot at. It catches its prey and ordinarily acts like a rather dull flycatcher, perching on some dead tree, swooping on insects and then returning to its perch, and never going on the ground to feed or run about. But it nests in burrows which it digs itself, one bird usually digging, while the other bird perches in a bush near by. Some- times these burrows are in the side of a sand-bank, the the sand being so loose that it is a marvel that it does not cave in. Sometimes the burrows are in the level plain, running down about three feet, and then rising at an angle. The nest consists of a few leaves and grasses, and the eggs are white. The other bird, called AT TAPIRAPOAN 159 a nun or waxbill, is about the size of a thrush, greyish in colour, with a waxy red bill. It also burrows in the level soil, the burrow being five feet long; and over the mouth of the burrow it heaps a pile of sticks and leaves. At this camp the heat was great—from 91° to 104° F.—and the air very heavy, being saturated with moisture; and there were many rain-storms. But there were no mosquitoes, and we were very comfortable. Thanks to the neighbourhood of the ranch, we fared sumptuously, with plenty of beef, chickens, and fresh milk. Two of the Brazilian dishes were delicious: canja, a thick soup of chicken and rice, the best soup a hungry man ever tasted ; and beef chopped in rather small pieces and served with a well-flavoured but simple gravy. The mule allotted me as a riding-beast was a powerful animal, with easy gaits. The Brazilian Government had waiting for me a very handsome silver-mounted saddle and bridle ; I was much pleased with both. However, my exceedingly rough and shabby clothing made an incongruous contrast. At Tapirapoan we broke up our baggage—as well as our party. We sent forward the Canadian canoe— which, with the motor-engine and some kerosene, went in a cart drawn by six oxen—and a hundred sealed tin cases of provisions, each containing rations for a day for six men. They had been put up in New York under the special direction of Fiala, for use when we got where we wished to take good and varied food in small compass. All the skins, skulls, and alcoholic specimens, and all the baggage not absolutely necessary, were sent back down the Paraguay and to New York, in charge of Harper. The separate baggage-trains, under the charge of Captain Amilcar, were organized to go 160 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [cuapr. v in one detachment. The main body of the expe- dition, consisting of the American members, and of Colonel Rondon, Lieutenant Lyra, and Doctor Cajazeira, with their baggage and provisions, formed another detachment. CHAPTER VI THROUGH THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS OF WESTERN BRAZIL WE were now in the land of the bloodsucking bats, the vampire bats that suck the blood of living creatures, clinging to or hovering against the shoulder of a horse or cow, or the hand or foot of a sleeping man, and making a wound from which the blood continues to flow long after the bat’s thirst has been satiated. At Tapirapoan there were milch cattle, and one of the calves turned up one morning weak from loss of blood, which was still trickling from a wound in front of the shoulder, made by a bat. But the bats do little damage in this neigh- bourhood compared to what they do in some other places, where not only the mules and cattle but the chickens have to be housed behind bat-proof protection at night or their lives may pay the penalty. The chief and habitual offenders are various species of rather small bats; but it is said that other kinds of Brazilian bats seem to have become, at least sporadically and locally, affected by the evil example, and occasionally vary their customary diet by draughts of living blood. One of the Brazilian members of our party, Hoehne, the botanist, was a zoologist also. He informed me that he had known even the big fruit-eating bats to take to bloodsucking. They did not, according to his 161 11 162 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. vi observations, themselves make the original wound, but after it had been made by one of the true vampires they would lap the flowing blood and enlarge the wound. South America makes up for its lack, relatively to Africa and India, of large man-eating carnivores by the extraordinary ferocity or bloodthirstiness of certain small creatures of which the kinsfolk else- where are harmless. It is only here that fish no bigger than trout kill swimmers, and bats the size. of the ordinary “flittermice” of the northern hemi- sphere drain the life-blood of big beasts and of man himself. There was not much large mammalian life in the neighbourhood. Kermit hunted industriously, and brought in an occasional armadillo, coati, or agouti for the naturalists. Miller trapped rats and a queer opossum new to the collection. Cherrie got many birds. Cherrie and Miller skinned their specimens in a little open hut or shed. Moses, the small pet owl, sat on a cross-bar overhead, an interested spectator, and chuckled whenever he was petted. ‘Two wrens, who bred just outside the hut, were much excited by the presence of Moses, and paid him visits of noisy unfriendliness. The little white-throated sparrows came familiarly about the palm cabins and whitewashed houses and trilled on the roof-trees. It was a simple song, with just a hint of our northern whitethroat’s sweet and plaintive melody, and of the opening bars of our song-sparrow’s pleasant, homely lay. It brought back dear memories of glorious April mornings on Long Island, when through the singing of robin and song-sparrow comes the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark ; and of the far northland woods in June, fragrant with the breath of pine and balsam-fir, where sweetheart sparrows sing from wet START FOR THE PLAN ALTO 163 spruce thickets, and rapid brooks rush under the drenched and swaying alder-boughs. From Tapirapoan our course lay northward up to and across the Plan Alto, the highland wilderness of Brazil. From the edges of this highland country, which is geologically very ancient, the affluents of the Amazon to the north, and of the Plate to the south, flow, with immense and devious loops and windings. Two days before we ourselves started with our mule- train, a train of pack-oxen left, loaded with provisions, tools, and other things, which we would not need until, after a month or six weeks, we began our descent into the valley of the Amazon. There were about seventy oxen. Most of them were well broken, but there were about a score which were either not broken at all or else very badly broken. These were loaded with much difficulty, and bucked like wild broncos. Again and again they scattered their loads over the corral and over the first part of the road. The pack-men, however— copper-coloured, black, and dusky-white—were not only masters of their art, but possessed tempers that could not be ruffled ; when they showed severity it was because severity was needed, and not because they were angry. They finally got all their longhorned beasts loaded, and started on the trail with them. On January 21 we ourselves started, with the mule- train. Of course, as always in such a journey, there was some confusion before the men and the animals of the train settled down to the routine performance of duty. In addition to the pack-animals we all had riding-mules. ‘The first day we journeyed about twelve miles, then crossed the Sepotuba and camped beside it, below a series of falls, or rather rapids. The country was level. It was a great natural pasture, covered with 164 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. vi a very open forest of low, twisted trees, bearing a super- ficial likeness to the cross-timbers of Texas and Okla- homa. It is as well fitted for stock-raising as Oklahoma ; and there is also much fine agricultural land, while the river will ultimately yield electric power. It is a fine country for settlement. The heat is great at noon, but the nights are not uncomfortable. We were supposed to be in the middle of the rainy season, but hitherto most of the days had been fine, varied with showers. The astonishing thing was the absence of mosquitoes. Insect pests that work by day can be stood, and especially by settlers, because they are far less serious foes in the clearings than in the woods. The mosquitoes and other night foes offer the really serious and unpleasant problem, because they break one’s rest. Hitherto, during our travels up the Paraguay and its tributaries, in this level, marshy, tropical region of western Brazil, we had practically not been bothered by mosquitoes at all in our home camps. Out in the woods they were at times a serious nuisance, and Cherrie and Miller had been subjected to real torment by them during some of their * special expeditions ; but there were practically none on the ranches and in our camps in the open fields by the river, even when marshes were close by. I was puzzled —and delighted—by their absence. Settlers need not be deterred from coming to this region by the fear of insect foes. This does not mean that there are not such foes. Outside of the clearings, and of the beaten tracks of travel, they teem. There are ticks, poisonous ants, wasps—of which some species are really serious menaces —biting flies, and gnats. I merely mean that, unlike so many other tropical regions, this particular region is, from the standpoint of the settler and the ordinary DIFFICULTIES OF PIONEERS 165 traveller, relatively free from insect pests, and a pleasant place of residence. The original explorer, and to an only less degree the hard-working field-naturalist or big-game hunter, have to face these pests, just as they have to face countless risks, hardships, and difficulties. This is inherent in their several professions or avocations. Many regions in the United States, where life is now absolutely comfortable and easy-going, offered most formidable problems to the first explorers a century or two ago. We must not fall into the foolish error of thinking that the first explorers need not suffer terrible hardships, merely because the ordinary travellers, and even the settlers who come after them, do not have to endure such danger, privation, and wearing fatigue— although the first among the genuine settlers also have to undergo exceedingly trying experiences. The early explorers and adventurers make fairly well-beaten trails at heavy cost to themselves. Ordinary travellers, with little discomfort and no danger, can then traverse these trails ; but it is incumbent on them neither to boast of their own experiences nor to misjudge the efforts of the pioneers because, thanks to these very efforts, their own lines fall in pleasant places. The ordinary traveller, who never goes off the beaten route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without himself doing any- thing or risking anything, does not need to show much more initiative and intelligence than an express package. He does nothing; others do all the work, show all the forethought, take all the risk—and are entitled to all the credit. He and his valise are carried in practically the same fashion ; and for each the achievement stands about on the same plane. If this kind of traveller is a writer, he can, of course, do admirable work—work of the highest value; but the value comes because he 166 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. v1 is a writer and observer, not because of any particular credit that attaches to him as a traveller. We all recognize this truth as far as highly civilized regions are concerned: when Bryce writes of the American commonwealth, or Lowell of European legislative as- semblies, our admiration is for the insight and thought of the observer, and we are not concerned with his travels. When a man travels across Arizona in a Pullman car, we do not think of him as having performed a feat bearing even the most remote resemblance to the feats of the first explorers of those waterless wastes ; whatever admiration we feel in connection with his trip is reserved for the traffic-superintendent, engineer, fireman, and brakeman. But as regards the less-known continents, such as South America, we sometimes fail to remember these obvious truths. There yet remains plenty of exploring work to be done in South America, as hard, as dangerous, and almost as important as any that has already been done; work such as has recently been done, or is now being done, by men and women such as Haseman, Farrabee, and Miss Snethlage. The col- lecting naturalists who go into the wilds and do first- class work encounter every kind of risk and undergo every kind of hardship and exertion. Explorers and naturalists of the right type have open to them in South America a field of extraordinary attraction and difficulty. But to excavate ruins that have already long been known, to visit out-of-the-way towns that date from colonial days, to traverse old, even if uncom- fortable, routes of travel, or to ascend or descend high- way rivers like the Amazon, the Paraguay, and the lower Orinoco—all of these exploits are well worth performing, but they in no sense represent exploration or adventure, and they do not entitle the performer, no THE WILDERNESS EXPLORER _ 167 matter how well he writes and no matter how much of real value he contributes to human knowledge, to compare himself in any way with the real wilderness wanderer, or to criticize the latter. Such a performance entails no hardship or difficulty worth heeding. Its value depends purely on observation, not on action. The man does little; he merely records what he sees. He is only the man of the beaten routes. The true wilderness wanderer, on the contrary, must be a man of action as well as of observation. He must have the heart and the body to do and to endure, no less than the eye to see and the brain to note and record. Let me make it clear that I am not depreciating the excellent work of so many of the men who have not gone off the beaten trails. I merely wish to make it plain that this excellent work must not be put in the class with that of the wilderness explorer. It is excellent work, nevertheless, and has its place, just as the work of the true explorer has its place. Both stand in sharpest contrast with the actions of those alleged explorers, among whom Mr. Savage Landor stands in unpleasant prominence. From the Sepotuba rapids our course at the outset lay westward. ‘The first day’s march away from the river lay through dense tropical forest. Away from the broad, beaten route every step of a man’s progress repre- sented slashing a trail with the machete through the tangle of bushes, low trees, thorny scrub, and interlaced creepers. There were palms of new kinds, very tall, slender, straight, and graceful, with rather short and few fronds. ‘The wild plantains, or pacovas, thronged the spaces among the trunks of the tall trees ; their boles were short, and their broad, erect leaves gigantic; they bore brilliant red-and-orange flowers. ‘There were trees 168 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [czap. v1 whose trunks bellied into huge swellings. There were towering trees with buttressed trunks, whose leaves made a fretwork against the sky far overhead. Gorgeous red-and-green trogons, with long tails, perched motion- less on the lower branches and uttered a loud, thrice- repeated whistle. We heard the calling of the false bell-bird, which is grey instead of white like the true bell-birds ; it keeps among the very topmost branches. Heavy rain fell shortly after we reached our camping- place. Next morning at sunrise we climbed a steep slope to the edge of the Parecis plateau, at a level of about two thousand feet above the sea. We were on the Plan Alto, the high central plain of Brazil, the healthy land of dry air, of cool nights, of clear, running brooks. The sun was directly behind us when we topped the rise. Reining in, we looked back over the vast Paraguayan marshes, shimmering in the long morning lights. Then, turning again, we rode forward, casting shadows far before us. It was twenty miles to the next water, and in hot weather the journey across this waterless, shade- less, sandy stretch of country is hard on the mules and oxen. But on this day the sky speedily grew overcast and a cool wind blew in our faces as we travelled at a quick, running walk over the immense rolling plain. The ground was sandy; it was covered with grass and with a sparse growth of stunted, twisted trees, never more than a few feet high. There were rheas—ostriches —and small pampas-deer on this plain; the coloration of the rheas made it difficult to see them at a distance, whereas the bright red coats of the little deer, and their uplifted flags as they ran, advertised them afar off. We also saw the footprints of cougars and of the small- toothed, big, red wolf. Cougars are the most inveterate Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon looking over the vast landscape The ground was sandy, covered with grass and with a sparse growth of stunted, twisted trees, never more than a few feet high From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt ON THE PLAN ALTO 169 enemies of these small South American deer, both those of the open grassy plain and those of the forest. It is not nearly as easy to get lost on these open plains as in the dense forest ; and where there is a long reasonably straight road or river to come back to, a man, even without a compass, is safe. But in these thick South American forests, especially on cloudy days, a compass is an absolute necessity. We were struck by the fact that the native hunters and ranchmen on such days continually lost themselves and, if permitted, travelled for miles through the forest, either in circles or in exactly the wrong direction. They had no such sense of direction as the forest-dwelling “Ndorobo hunters in Africa had, or as the true forest-dwelling Indians of South America are said to have. On certainly half a dozen occasions our guides went completely astray, and we had to take command, to disregard their asser- tions, and to lead the way aright by sole reliance on our compasses. On this cool day we travelled well. The air was wonderful; the vast open spaces gave a sense of abounding vigour and freedom. Larly in the afternoon we reached a station made by Colonel Rondon in the course of his first explorations. There were several houses with whitewashed walls, stone floors, and tiled or thatched roofs. They stood in a wide, gently sloping valley. Through it ran a rapid brook of cool water, in which we enjoyed delightful baths. The heavy, intensely humid atmosphere of the low, marshy plains had gone ; the air was clear and fresh; the sky was brilliant; far and wide we looked over a landscape that seemed limit- less ; the breeze that blew in our faces might have come from our own northern plains. The midday sun was very hot; but it was hard to realize that we were in the 170 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cnar. v1 torrid zone. There were no mosquitoes, so that we never put up our nets when we went to bed; but wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and slept soundly through the cool, pleasant nights. Surely in the future this region will be the home of a healthy, highly civilized population. It is good for cattle-raising, and the valleys are fitted for agriculture. From June to September the nights are often really cold. Any sound northern race could live here; and in such a land, with such a climate, there would be much joy of living. On these plains the Telegraphic Commission uses motor-trucks ; and these now served to relieve the mules and oxen; for some of them, especially among the oxen, already showed the effects of the strain. Travelling in a wild country with a pack-train is not easy on the pack- animals. It was strange to see these big motor-vans out in the wilderness where there was not a settler, not a civilized man except the employees of the Tele- graphic Commission. They were handled by Lieutenant Lauriad6, who, with Lieutenant Mello, had taken special charge of our transport service ; both were exceptionally good and competent men. The following day we again rode on across the Plan Alto. In the early afternoon, in the midst of a down- pour of rain, we crossed the divide between the basins of the Paraguay and the Amazon. That evening we camped on a brook whose waters ultimately ran into the Tapajos. The rain fell throughout the afternoon, now lightly, now heavily, and the mule-train did not get up until dark. But enough tents and flies were pitched to shelter all of us. Fires were lit, and—after a fourteen hours’ fast—we feasted royally on beans and rice and pork and beef, seated around ox-skins spread upon the ground. The sky cleared; the stars blazed INSECT LIFE 171 down through the cool night; and wrapped in our blankets we slept soundly, warm and comfortable. Next morning the trail had turned, and our course led northward and at times east of north. We traversed the same high, rolling plains of coarse grass and stunted trees. Kermit, riding a big, iron-mouthed, bull-headed white mule, rode off to one side on a hunt, and rejoined the line of march carrying two bucks of the little pampas- deer, or field-deer, behind his saddle. ‘These deer are very pretty and graceful, with a tail like that of the Columbian black-tail. .Standing motionless facing one, in the sparse scrub, they are hard to make out ; if seen side- ways the reddish colour of their coats, contrasted with the greens and greys of the landscape, betrays them; and when they bound off, the upraised white tail is very conspicuous. They carefully avoid the woods in which their cousins, the little bush-deer, are found, and go singly or in couples. Their odour can be made out at a considerable distance, but it is not rank. They still carried their antlers. Their venison was delicious. We came across many queer insects. One red grass- hopper when it flew seemed as big as a small sparrow ; and we passed in some places such multitudes of active little green grasshoppers that they frightened the mules. At our camping-place we saw an extraordinary colony of spiders. It was among some dwarf trees, standing a few yards apart from one another by the water. When we reached the camping-place, early in the afternoon— the pack-train did not get in until nearly sunset, just ahead of the rain—no spiders were out. They were under the leaves of the trees. Their webs were tenant- less, and indeed for the most part were broken down. But at dusk they came out from their hiding-places, two or three hundred of them in all, and at once began 172 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. v1 to repair the old and spin new webs. Each spun its own circular web, and sat in the middle; and each web was connected on several sides with other webs, while those nearest the trees were hung to them by spun ropes, so to speak. The result was a kind of sheet of web consisting of scores of wheels, in each of which the owner and proprietor sat; and there were half a dozen such sheets, each extending between two trees. The webs could hardly be seen, and the effect was of scores of big, formidable-looking spiders poised in mid- air, equidistant from one another, between each pair of trees. When darkness and rain fell they were still out, fixing their webs, and pouncing on the occasional insects that blundered into the webs. I have no question that they are nocturnal; they certainly hide in the daytime, and it seems impossible that they can come out only for a few minutes at dusk. In the evenings, after supper or dinner—it is hard to tell by what title the exceedingly movable evening meal should be called—the members of the party sometimes told stories of incidents in their past lives. Most of them were men of varied experiences. Rondon and Lyra told of the hardship and suffering of the first trips through the wilderness across which we were going with such comfort. On this very plateau they had once lived for weeks on the fruits of the various fruit-bearing trees. Naturally they became emaciated and feeble. In the forests of the Amazonian basin they did better, because they often shot birds and plundered the hives of the wild honey-bees. In cutting the trail for the telegraph- line through the Juruena basin they lost every single one of the hundred and sixty mules with which they had started. Those men pay dear who build the first foundations of empire! Fiala told of the long polar LANCERS IN WAR 173 nights, and of white bears that came round the snow- huts of the explorers, greedy to eat them, and themselves destined to be eaten by them. Of all the party Cherrie’s experiences had covered the widest range. This was partly owing to the fact that the latter-day naturalist of the most vigorous type who goes into the untrodden wastes of the world must see and do many strange things ; and still more owing to the character of the man himself. The things he had seen and done and undergone often enabled him to cast the light of his own past experience on unexpected subjects. Once we were talking about the proper weapons for cavalry, and someone mentioned the theory that the lance is especially formidable because of the moral effect it produces on the enemy. Cherrie nodded emphatically ; and a little cross- examination elicited the fact that he was speaking from lively personal recollection of his own feelings when charged by lancers. It was while he was fighting with the Venezuelan insurgents in an unsuccessful uprising against the tyranny of Castro. He was on foot, with five Venezuelans, all cool men and good shots. In an open plain they were charged by twenty of Castro’s lancers, who galloped out from behind cover two or three hundred yards off. It was a war in which neither side gave quarter, and in which the wounded and the prisoners were butchered—just as President Madero was butchered in Mexico. Cherrie knew that it meant death for him and his companions if the charge came home ; and the sight of the horsemen running in at full speed, with their long lances in rest and the blades glittering, left an indelible impression on his mind. But he and his companions shot deliberately and ac- curately; ten of the lancers were killed, the nearest falling within fifty yards; and the others rode off in 174 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuapr. vi headlong haste. A cool man with a rifle, if he has mastered his weapon, need fear no foe. At this camp the auto-vans again joined us. They were to go direct to the first telegraph station, at the great falls of the Utiarity, on the Rio Papagaio. Of course, they travelled faster than the mule-train. Father Zahm, attended by Sigg, started for the falls in them. Cherrie and Miller also went in them, because they had found that it was very difficult to collect birds, and especially mammals, when we were moving every day, packing up early each morning and the mule-train arriving late in the afternoon or not until nightfall. Moreover, there was much rain, which made it difficult to work except under the tents. Accordingly, the two naturalists desired to get to a place where they could spend several days and collect steadily, thereby doing more effective work. The rest of us continued with the mule-train, as was necessary. It was always a picturesque sight when camp was broken, and again at nightfall when the laden mules came stringing in, and their burdens were thrown down, while the tents were pitched and the fires lit. We breakfasted before leaving camp, the aluminium cups and plates being placed on ox-hides, round which we sat, on the ground or on camp-stools. We fared well on rice, beans, and crackers, with canned corned beef and salmon or any game that had been shot, and coffee, tea, and matté. I then usually sat down somewhere to write,-and when the mules were nearly ready I popped my writing-materials into my duffel-bag—war-sack, as we would have called it in the old days on the plains. I found that the mules usually arrived so late in the afternoon or evening that I could not depend upon being able to write at that time. Of course, if we made THE RIO DA DUVIDA 175 a very early start I could not write at all. At night there were no mosquitoes. In the daytime gnats and sand-flies and horse-flies sometimes bothered us a little, but not much. Small, stingless bees lit on us in numbers and crawled over the skin, making a slight tickling ; but we did not mind them until they became very numerous. There was a good deal of rain, but not enough to cause any serious annoyance. Colonel Rondon and Lieutenant Lyra held many discussions as to whither the Rio da Divida flowed, and where its mouth might be. Its provisional name— “River of Doubt ”—was given it precisely because of this ignorance concerning it ; an ignorance which it was one of the purposes of our trip to dispel. It might go into the Gy-Parand, in which case its course must be very short; it might flow into the Madeira low down, in which case its course would be very long; or, which was unlikely, it might flow into the Tapajos. There was another river, the headwaters of which Colonel Rondon had come across, whose course was equally doubtful, although in its case there was rather more probability of its flowing into the Juruena, by which name the Tapajos is known for its upper half. To this unknown river Colonel Rondon had given the name Ananas, because when he came across it he found a deserted Indian field with pineapples, which the hungry explorers ate greedily. Among the things the Colonel and I hoped to accomplish on the trip was to do a little work in clearing up one or the other of these two doubtful geographical points, and thereby to push a little forward the knowledge of this region. Originally, as described in the first chapter, my trip was undertaken primarily in the interest of the American Museum of Natural History of New York, to add to our knowledge of the 176 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. vi birds and mammals of the far interior of the western Brazilian wilderness ; and the labels of our baggage and scientific equipment, printed by the museum, were entitled “Colonel Roosevelt’s South American expedi- tion for the American Museum of Natural History.” But, as I have already mentioned, at Rio the Brazilian Government, through the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Doctor Lauro Miiller, suggested that I should combine the expedition with one by Colonel Rondon, which they contemplated making, and thereby make both expedi- tions of broader scientific interest. I accepted the proposal with much pleasure ; and we found, when we joined Colonel Rondon and his associates, that their baggage and equipment had been labelled by the Brazilian Government “Expedicao Scientifica Roosevelt- Rondon.” This thenceforth became the proper and official title of the expedition. Cherrie and Miller did the chief zoological work. The geological work was done by a Brazilian member of the expedition, Euzebio Oliveira. The astronomical work necessary for obtaining the exact geographical location of the rivers and points of note was to be done by Lieutenant Lyra, under the supervision of Colonel Rondon ; and at the telegraph stations this astronomical work would be checked by wire communications with one of Colonel Rondon’s assistants at Cuyaba, Lieutenant Caetano, thereby securing a minutely accurate comparison of time. The sketch-maps and surveying and cartographical work generally were to be made under the supervision of Colonel Rondon by Lyra, with assistance from Fiala and Kermit. Captain Amilcar handled the worst problem— transportation. The medical member was Doctor Cajazeira. At night around the camp-fire my Brazilian com- EARLY PIONEERS At? panions often spoke of the first explorers of this vast wilderness of western Brazil—men whose very names are now hardly known, but who did each his part in opening the country which will some day see such growth and development. Among the most notable of them was a Portuguese, Ricardo Franco, who spent forty years at the work, during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the opening years of the nineteenth centuries. He ascended for long distances the Xingu and the Tapajos, and went up the Madeira and Guaporé, crossing to the headwaters of the Paraguay and partially exploring there also. He worked among and with the Indians, much as Mungo Park worked with the natives of West Africa, having none of the aids, instruments, and comforts with which even the hardiest of modern explorers are provided. He was one of the men who established the beginnings of the province of Matto Grosso. For many years the sole method of communi- cation between this remote interior province and civi- lization was by the long, difficult, and perilous route which led up the Amazon and Madeira; and its then capital, the town of Matto Grosso, the seat of the Captain- General, with its palace, cathedral, and fortress, was accordingly placed far to the west, near the Guaporé. When less circuitous lines of communication were established farther eastward the old capital was abandoned, and the tropic wilderness surged over the lonely little town. The tomb of the old colonial explorer still stands in the ruined cathedral, where the forest has once more come to its own. But civilization is again advancing to reclaim the lost town and to revive the memory of the wilderness wanderer who helped to found it. Colonel Rondon has named a river after Franco—a range of mountains has also been 12 178 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuapr. vi named after him—and the Colonel, acting for the Brazilian Government, has established a_ telegraph station in what was once the palace of the Captain- General. Our northward trail led along the high ground a league or two to the east of the northward-flowing Rio Sacre. Each night we camped on one of the small tribu- tary brooks that fed it. Fiala, Kermit, and I, occupied one tent. Inthe daytime the “ pium ” flies, vicious little sand-tlies, beeame bad enough to make us finally use gloves and head-nets. There were many heavy rains, which made the travelling hard for the mules. The soil was more often clay than sand, and it was slippery when wet. The weather was overcast, and there was usually no oppressive heat even at noon. At intervals along the trail we came on the staring skull and bleached skeleton of a mule or ox. Day after day we rode for- ward across endless flats of grass and of low open scrubby forest, the trees standing far apart and in most places being but little higher than the head of a horse- man. Some of them carried blossoms, white, orange, yellow, pink; and there were many flowers, the most beautiful being the morning-glories. Among the trees were bastard rubber-trees, and dwarf palmetto; if the latter grew more than a few feet high their tops were torn and dishevelled by the wind. ‘There was very little bird or mammal life; there were few long vistas, for in most places it was not possible to see far among the grey, gnarled trunks of the wind-beaten little trees. Yet the desolate landscape had a certain charm of its own, although not a charm that would be felt by any man who does not take pleasure in mere space, and freedom and wildness, and in plains standing empty to the sun, the wind, and the rain. ‘The country bore some ANTS 179 resemblance to the country west of Redjaf on the White Nile, the home of the giant eland; only here there was no big game, no chance of seeing the towering form of the giraffe, the black bulk of elephant or buffalo, the herds of straw-coloured hartebeests, or the ghostly shimmer of the sun glinting on the coats of roan and eland as they vanished silently in the grey sea of withered scrub. One feature in common with the African landscape was the abundance of ant-hills, some as high as a man. They were red in the clay country, grey where it was sandy ; and the dirt houses were also in trees, while their raised tunnels traversed trees and ground alike. At some of the camping-places we had to be on our watch against the swarms of leaf-carrying ants. These are so called in the books—the Brazilians call them “ carregadores,” or porters—because they are always carrying bits of leaves and blades of grass to their underground homes. They are inveterate burden-bearers, and they industriously cut into pieces and carry off any garment they can get at ; and we had to guard our shoes and clothes from them, just as we had often had to guard all our belongings against the termites. These ants did not bite us; but we encountered huge black ants, an inch and a quarter long, which were very vicious, and their bite was not only painful but quite poisonous. Praying-mantes were common, and one evening at supper one had a comical encounter with a young dog, a jovial near-puppy, of Colonel Rondon’s, named Cartucho. He had been christened “the jolly-cum-pup,” from a character in one of Frank Stockton’s stories, which I suppose are now remembered only by elderly people, and by them only if they are natives of the United States. Cartucho was lying with his head on the ox-hide that served as table, 180 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. vi waiting with poorly dissembled impatience for his share of the banquet. The mantis flew down on the ox-hide and proceeded to crawl over it, taking little flights from one corner to another; and whenever it thought itself menaced it assumed an attitude of seeming devotion and real defiance. Soon it lit in front of Cartucho’s nose. Cartucho cocked his big ears forward, stretched his neck, and cautiously sniffed at the new arrival, not with any hostile design, but merely to find out whether it would prove to be a playmate. The mantis promptly assumed an attitude of prayer. This struck Cartucho as both novel and interesting, and he thrust his sniffing black nose still nearer. The mantis dexterously thrust forward first one and then the other armed fore leg, touching the intrusive nose, which was instantly jerked back and again slowly and inquiringly brought forward. Then the mantis suddenly flew in Cartucho’s face, whereupon Cartucho, with a smothered yelp of dismay, almost turned a back somersault; and the triumphant mantis flew back to the middle of the ox-hide, among the plates, where it reared erect and defied the laughing and applauding company. On the morning of the 29th we were rather late in starting, because the rain had continued through the night into the morning, drenching everything. After nightfall there had been some mosquitoes, and the piums were a pest during daylight ; where one bites it leaves a tiny black spot on the skin which lasts for several weeks. In the slippery mud one of the pack-mules fell and injured itself so that it had to be abandoned. Soon after starting we came on the telegraph-line, which runs from Cayuba ; this was the first time we had seen it. ‘Two Parecis Indians joined us, leading a pack-bullock. They were dressed in hat, shirt, trousers, and sandals, precisely THE SALTO BELLO 181 like the, ordinary Brazilian caboclos, as the poor back- woods peasants, usually with little white blood in them, are colloquially and half-derisively styled—caboclo being originally a Guarany word meaning “naked savage.” Thtse two Indians were in the employ of the Tele- graphic Commission, and had been patrolling the telegraph-line. The bullock carried their personal belongings and the tools with which they could repair a break. The commission pays the ordinary Indian worker 66 cents a day; a very good worker gets $1, and the chief $1.66. No man gets anything unless he works. Colonel Rondon, by just, kindly, and understanding treatment of these Indians, who previously had often been exploited and maltreated by rubber-gatherers, has made them the loyal friends of the government. He has gathered them at the telegraph stations, where they cultivate fields of mandioc, beans, potatoes, maize, and other vegetables, and where he is introducing them to stock-raising ; and the entire work of guarding and patrolling the line is theirs. After six hours’ march we came to the crossing of the Rio Sacre at the beautiful waterfall appropriately called the Salto Bello. This is the end of the automobile road. Here there is a small Parecis village. The men of the village work the ferry by which everything is taken across the deep and rapid river. The ferry-boat is made of planking placed on three dugout canoes, and runs on a trolley. Before crossing we enjoyed a good swim in the swift, clear, cool water. The Indian village, where we camped, is placed on a jutting tongue of land round which the river sweeps just before it leaps from the overhanging precipice. The falls themselves are very lovely. Just above them is a wooded island, but the river joins again before it races forward for the final 182 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. v1 plunge. There is a sheer drop of forty or fifty yards, with a breadth two or three times as great; and the volume of water is large. On the left or hither bank a cliff extends for several hundred yards below the falls. Green vines have flung themselves down over its face, and they are met by other vines thrusting upward from the mass of vegetation at its foot, glistening in the perpetual mist from the cataract, and clothing even the rock surfaces in vivid green. The river, after throwing itself over the rock wall, rushes off in long curves at the bottom of a thickly wooded ravine, the white water churning among the black boulders. There is a perpetual rainbow at the foot of the falls. The masses of green water that are hurling themselves over the brink dissolve into shifting, foaming columns of snowy lace. On the edge of the cliff below the falls Colonel Rondon had placed benches, giving a curious touch of rather conventional tourist-civilization to this cataract far out in the lonely wilderness. It is well worth visiting for its beauty. It is also of extreme interest because of the promise it holds for the future. Lieutenant Lyra informed me that they had calculated that this fall would furnish thirty-six thousand horse-power. Eight miles off we were to see another fall of much greater height and power. There are many rivers in this region which would furnish almost unlimited motive force to populous manufacturing communities. The countryround about is healthy. It is an upland region of good climate; we were visiting it in the rainy season, the season when the nights are far less cool than in the dry season, and yet we found it delightful. There is much fertile soil in the neighbourhood of the streams, and the teeming lowlands of the Amazon and the Paraguay could readily—and with immense advantage to both sides—be made sayrzy &q ydossopoys v uwoLy jealg sv saw} aa1yi sdeyied yipvaiq v pu ‘spied Arf Jo Az10} Jo doip saays & st ody], SPL OPE OUPS LL THE PARECIS INDIANS 183 tributary to an industrial civilization seated on these highlands. A telegraph-line has been built to and across them. A railroad should follow. Such a line could be easily built, for there are no serious natural obstacles. In advance of its construction a trolley-line could be run from Cuyabé to the falls, using the power furnished by the latter. Once this is done the land will offer extraordinary opportunities to settlers of the right kind: to home-makers and to enterprising business men of foresight, coolness, and sagacity who are willing to work with the settlers, the immigrants, the home-makers, for an advantage which shall be mutual. The Parecis Indians, whom we met here, were exceed- ingly interesting. They were to all appearance an un- usually cheerful, good-humoured, pleasant - natured people. Their teeth were bad ; otherwise they appeared strong and vigorous, and there were plenty of children. The colonel was received as a valued friend and as a leader who was to be followed and obeyed. He is raising them by degrees—the only way by which to make the rise permanent. In this village he has got them to substitute for the flimsy Indian cabins houses of the type usual among the poorer field labourers and back-country dwellers in Brazil. ‘These houses have roofs of palm thatch, steeply pitched. They are usually open at the sides, consisting merely of a framework of timbers, with a wall at the back; but some have the ordinary four walls, of erect palm-logs. The hammocks are slung in the houses, and the cooking is also done in them, with pots placed on small open fires, or occasionally in a kind of clay oven. ‘he big gourds for water, and the wicker baskets, are placed on the ground, or hung on the poles. 184 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuapr. v1 The men had adopted, and were wearing, shirts and trousers, but the women had made little change in their clothing. A few wore print dresses, but obviously only for ornament. Most of them, especially the girls and young married women, wore nothing but a loin-cloth in addition to bead necklaces and bracelets. The nursing mothers—and almost all the mothers were nursing— sometimes carried the child slung against their side or hip, seated in a cloth belt, or sling, which went over the opposite shoulder of the mother. ‘The women seemed to be well treated, although polygamy is practised. ‘The children were loved by every one; they were petted by both men and women, and they behaved well to one another, the boys not seeming to bully the girls or the smaller boys. Most of the children were naked, but the girls early wore the loin-cloth ; and some, both of the little boys and the little girls, wore coloured print garments, to the evident pride of themselves and their parents. In each house there were several families, and life went on with no privacy but with good humour, consideration, and fundamentally good manners. The man or woman who had nothing to do lay in a hammock or squatted on the ground leaning against a post or wall. The children played together, or lay in little hammocks, or tagged round after their mothers; and when called they came trustfully up to us to be petted or given some small trinket ; they were friendly little souls, and accus- tomed to good treatment. One woman was weaving a cloth, another was making a hammock; others made ready melons and other vegetables and cooked them over tiny fires. The men, who had come in from work at the ferry or along the telegraph-lines, did some work them- selves, or played with the children ; one cut a small boy’s hair, and then had his own hair cut by a friend. But One woman was making a hammock From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt The mothers carried the child slung against their side or hip, seated in a cloth belt, or sling, which went over the opposite shoulder of the mother [A few wore print dresses—most of them wore nothing but a Join-cloth] From photographs by Cherrie and Miller AN EXTRAORDINARY GAME OF BALL 185 the absorbing amusement of the men was an extra- ordinary game of ball. In our family we have always relished Oliver Herford’s nonsense rhymes, including the account of Willie’s dis- pleasure with his goat: “T do not like my billy goat, I wish that he was dead ; Because he kicked me, so he did, He kicked me with his head.” Well, these Parecis Indians enthusiastically play foot- ball with their heads. The game is not only native to them, but I have never heard or read of its being played by any other tribe or people. They use a light hollow rubber ball, of their own manufacture. It is circular and about eight inches in diameter. The players are divided into two sides, and stationed much as in Associa- tion football, and the ball is placed on the ground to be put in play as in football. Then a player runs forward, throws himself flat on the ground, and butts the ball toward the opposite side. This first butt, when the ball is on the ground, never lifts it much and it rolls and bounds toward the opponents. One or two of the latter run toward it; one throws himself flat on his face and butts the ball back. Usually this butt lifts it,.and it flies back in a curve weil up in the air; and an opposite player, rushing toward it, catches it on his head with such a swing of his brawny neck, and such precision and address that the ball bounds back through the air as a football soars after a drop-kick. If the ball flies off to one side or the other it is brought back, and again put in play. Often it will be sent to and fro a dozen times, from head to head, until finally it rises with such a sweep that it passes far over the heads of the opposite players 186 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. v1 and descends behind them. Then shrill, rolling cries of good-humoured triumph arise from the victors ; and the game instantly begins again with fresh zest. There are, of course, no such rules as in a specialized ball-game of civilization ; and I saw no disputes. There may be eight or ten, or many more, players on each side. The ball is never touched with the hands or feet, or with anything except the top of the head. It is hard to decide whether to wonder most at the dexterity and strength with which it is hit or butted with the head, as it comes down through the air, or at the reckless speed and skill with which the players throw themselves headlong on the ground to return the ball if it comes low down. Why they do not grind off their noses I cannot imagine. Some of the players hardly ever failed to catch and return the ball if it came in their neighbourhood, and with such a vigorous toss of the head that it often flew in a great curve for a really astonishing distance. That night a pack-ox got into the tent in which Kermit and I were sleeping, entering first at one end and then at the other. It is extraordinary that he did not waken us; but we slept undisturbed, while the ox deliberately ate our shirts, socks, and underclothes! It chewed them into rags. One of my socks escaped, and my undershirt, although chewed full of holes, was still good for some weeks’ wear; but the other things were in fragments. In the morning Colonel Rondon arranged for us to have breakfast over on the benches under the trees by the waterfall, whose roar, lulled to a thunderous murmur, had been in our ears before we slept and when we waked. There could have been no more picturesque place for the breakfast of such a party as ours. All travellers who really care to see what is The kick-off: a player runs forward, throws himself flat on the ground, and butts the ball toward the opposite side From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt Often it will be sent to and fro a dozen times, from head to head until finally it rises From a photograph by Fiala The game of headball played by Parecis Indians at Utiarity Falls A TRIBAL QUARREL 187 most beautiful and most characteristic of the far interior of South America should in their journey visit this region, and see the two great waterfalls. They are, even now, easy of access; and as soon as the traffic warrants it they will be made still more so; then, from Sao Luis de Caceres, they will be speedily reached by light steamboat up the Sepotuba, and by a day or two’s automobile ride, with a couple of days on horseback in between. The Colonel held a very serious council with the Parecis Indians over an incident which caused him grave concern. One of the Commission’s employees, a negro, had killed a wild Nhambiquara Indian ; but it appeared that he had really been urged on and aided by the Parecis, as the members of the tribe to which the dead Indian belonged were much given to carrying off the Parecis women, and in other ways making them- selves bad neighbours. The Colonel tried hard to get at the truth of the matter; he went to the biggest Indian house, where he sat in a hammock—an Indian child cuddling solemnly up to him, by the way—while the Indians sat in other hammocks, and stood round about ; but it was impossible to get an absolutely frank statement. It appeared, however, that the Nhambiquaras had made a descent on the Parecis village in the momentary absence of the men of the village ; but the latter, notified by the screaming of the women, had returned in time to rescue them. The negro was with them and, having a good rifle, he killed one of the aggressors. The Parecis were, of course, in the right, but the Colonel could not afford to have his men take sides in a tribal quarrel. It was only a two hours’ march across to the Papa- gaio at the Falls of Utiarity, so named by their dis- 188 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. v1 coverer, Colonel Rondon, after the sacred falcon of the Parecis. On the way we passed our Indian friends, themselves bound thither; both the men and the women bore burdens—the burdens of some of the women, poor things, were heavy—and even the small naked children carried the live hens. At Utiarity there is a big Parecis settlement, and a telegraph station kept by one of the employes of the Commission. His pretty brown wife is acting as schoolmistress to a group of little Parecis girls. The Parecis chief has been made a major, and wears a uniform accordingly. The Com- mission has erected good buildings for its own employees, and has superintended the erection of good houses for the Indians. Most of the latter still prefer the simplicity of the loin-cloth, in their ordinary lives, but they proudly wore their civilized clothes in our honour. When in the late afternoon the men began to play a regular match game of headball, with a scorer or umpire to keep count, they soon discarded most of their clothes, coming down to nothing but trousers or a loin-cloth. Two or three of them had their faces stained with red ochre. Among the women and children looking on were a couple of little girls who paraded about on stilts. The great waterfall was half a mile below us. Lovely though we had found Salto Bello, these falls were far superior in beauty and majesty. They are twice as high and twice as broad ; and the lie of the land is such that the various landscapes in which the waterfall is a feature are more striking. A few hundred yards above the falls the river turns at an angle and widens. The broad, rapid shallows are crested with whitecaps. Be- yond this wide expanse of flecked and hurrying water rise the mist columns of the cataract; and as these columns are swayed and broken by the wind the forest The Falls of Utiarity I doubt whether, excepting, of course, Niagara, there is a waterfall in North America which outranks this if both volume and beauty are considered From a photograph by Cherrie AN INDIAN MAJOR 189 appears through and between them. From below the view is one of singular grandeur. The fall is over a shelving ledge of rock, which goes in a nearly straight line across the river’s course. But at the left there is a salient in the cliff-line, and here, accordingly, a great cataract of foaming water comes down almost as a separate body, in advance of the line of the main fall. I doubt whether, excepting of course, Niagara, there is a waterfall in North America which outranks this if both volume and beauty are considered. Above the fall the river flows through a wide valley with gently sloping sides. Below, it slips along, a torrent of whity-green water, at the bottom of a deep gorge ; and the sides of the gorge are clothed with a towering growth of tropical forest. Next morning the cacique of these Indians, in his major’s uniform, came to breakfast, and bore himself with entire propriety. It was raining heavily—it rained most of the time—and a few minutes previously I had noticed the cacique’s two wives, with three or four other young women, going out to the mandioc fields. It was a picturesque group. The women were all mothers, and each carried a nursing child. They wore loin- cloths or short skirts. Each carried on her back a wickerwork basket supported by a head-strap which went around her forehead. Each carried a belt slung diagonally across her body, over her right shoulder ; in this the child was carried, against and perhaps astride of her left hip. They were comely women, who did not look jaded or cowed; and they laughed cheerfully, and nodded to us as they passed through the rain, on their way to the fields. But the contrast between them and the chief, in his soldier’s uniform, seated at break- fast, was rather too striking ; and incidentally it etched, 190 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuar. vi in bold lines, the folly of those who idealize the life of even exceptionally good and pleasant-natured savages. Although it was the rainy season, the trip up to this point had not been difficult, and from May to October, when the climate is dry and at its best, there would be practically no hardship at all for travellers and visitors. This is a healthy plateau. But, of course, the men who do the first pioneering, even in country like this, encounter dangers and run risks; and they make pay- ment with their bodies. At more than one halting- place we had come across the forlorn grave of some soldier or labourer of the Commission. The grave- mound lay within a rude stockade; and an uninscribed wooden cross, grey and weather-beaten, marked the last resting-place of the unknown and forgotten man beneath, the man who had paid with his humble life the cost of pushing the frontier of civilization into the wild savagery of the wilderness. Farther west the con- ditions become less healthy. At this station Colonel Rondon received news of sickness and of some deaths among the employees of the commission in the country to the westward, which we were soon to enter. Beriberi and malignant malarial fever were the diseases which claimed the major number of the victims. Surely these are “the men who do the work for which they draw the wage.” Kermit had with him the same copy of Kipling’s poems which he had carried through Africa. At these falls there was one sunset of angry splendour; and we contrasted this going down of the sun, through broken rain-clouds and over leagues of wet tropical forest, with the desert sunsets we had seen in Arizona and Sonora, and along the Guaso Nyiro north and west of Mount Kenia, when the barren mountains were changed into flaming “ramparts of A lonely grave by the wayside At more than one halting-place we had come across the forlorn grave of some soldier or labourer of the commission From a photograph by Cherrie The Parecis dance Most of them wore on one leg anklets which rattled From a photograph by Miller INCESSANT RAIN 191 slaughter and peril” standing above “the wine-dark flats below.” It rained during most of the day after our arrival at Utiarity. Whenever there was any let-up, the men promptly came forth from their houses and played headball with the utmost vigour; and we would listen to their shrill undulating cries of applause and triumph until we also grew interested and strolled over to look on. They are more infatuated with the game than an American boy is with baseball or football. It is an extraordinary thing that this strange and exciting game should be played by, and only by, one little tribe of Indians in what is almost the very centre of South America. If any traveller or ethnologist knows of a tribe elsewhere that plays a similar game, I wish he would let me know. To play it demands great activity, vigour, skill, and endurance. Looking at the strong, supple bodies of the players, and at the number of children round about, it seemed as if the tribe must be in vigorous health; yet the Parecis have decreased in numbers, for measles and smallpox have been fatal to them. By the evening the rain was coming down more heavily than ever. It was not possible to keep the moisture out of our belongings; everything became mouldy except what became rusty. It rained all that night ; and daylight saw the downpour continuing with no prospect of cessation. The pack-mules could not have gone on with the march; they were already rather done up by their previous ten days’ labour through rain and mud, and it seemed advisable to wait until the weather became better before attempting to go forward. Moreover, there had been no chance to take the desired astronomical observations. There was very little grass 192 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuap. vi for the mules; but there was abundance of a small- leaved plant eight or ten inches high—unfortunately, not very nourishing—on which they fed greedily. In such weather and over such muddy trails oxen travel better than mules. In spite of the weather Cherrie and Miller, whom, together with Father Zahm and Sigg, we had found awaiting us, made good collections of birds and mam- mals. Among the latter were opossums and mice that were new to them. The birds included various forms so unlike our home birds that the enumeration of their names would mean nothing. One of the most interesting was a large black-and-white woodpecker, the white pre- dominating in the plumage. Several of these wood- peckers were usually found together. They were showy, noisy, and restless, and perched on twigs, in ordinary bird fashion, at least as often as they clung to the trunks in orthodox wood-pecker style. The prettiest bird was a tiny manakin, coal-black, with a red-and- orange head. On February 2 the rain ceased, although the sky remained overcast and there were occasional showers. I walked off with my rifle for.a couple of leagues ; at that distance, from a slight hillock, the mist columns of the falls were conspicuous in the landscape. The only mammal I saw on the walk was a rather hairy armadillo, with a flexible tail, which I picked up and brought back to Miller ; it showed none of the speed of the nine-banded armadillos we met on our jaguar-hunt. Judging by its actions, as it trotted about before it saw me, it must be diurnal in habits. It was new to the collection. I spent much of the afternoon by the waterfall. Under the overcast sky the great cataract lost the deep A NATIVE DANCE 198 green and fleecy-white of the sunlit falling waters. Instead it showed opaline hues and tints of topaz and amethyst. At all times, and under all lights, it was majestic and beautiful. Colonel Rondon had given the Indians various pre- sents, those for the women including calico prints, and, what they especially prized, bottles of scented oil, from Paris, for their hair. The men held a dance in the late afternoon. For this occasion most, but not all, of them cast aside their civilized clothing, and appeared as doubtless they would all have appeared had none but themselves been present. They were absolutely naked except for a beaded string round the waist. Most of them were spotted and dashed with red paint, and on one leg wore anklets which rattled. A number carried pipes through which they blew a kind of deep stifled whistle in time to the dancing. One of them had his pipe leading into a huge gourd, which gave out a hollow, moaning boom. Many wore two red or green or yellow macaw feathers in their hair, and one had a macaw feather stuck transversely through the septum of his nose. They circled slowly round and round, chanting and stamping their feet, while the anklet rattles clattered and the pipes droned. They advanced to the wall of one of the houses, again and again chanting and bowing before it; I was told this was a demand for drink. ‘They entered one house and danced in a ring around the cooking-fire in the middle of the earth floor; I was told that they were then reciting the deeds of mighty hunters and describing how they brought in the game. They drank freely from gourds and pannikins of a fermented drink made from mandioc which were brought out to them. During the first part of the dance the women remained in the 13 194 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [cuarp. vi houses, and all the doors and windows were shut and blankets hung to prevent the possibility of seeing out. But during the second part all the women and girls come out and looked on. They were themselves to have danced when the men had finished, but were overcome with shyness at the thought of dancing with so many strangers looking on. The children played about with unconcern throughout the ceremony, one of them throwing high in the air, and again catching in his hands, a loaded feather, a kind of shuttlecock. In the evening the growing moon shone through the cloud-rack. Anything approaching fair weather always put our men in good spirits ; and the muleteers squatted in a circle, by a fire near a pile of packs, and listened to along monotonously and rather mournfully chanted song about a dance and a love-affair. We ourselves worked busily with our photographs and our writing. There was so much humidity in the air that everything grew damp and stayed damp, and mould gathered quickly. At this season it is a country in which writing, taking photographs, and preparing specimens are all works of difficulty, at least so far as concerns preserving and sending home the results of the labour; and a man’s clothing is never really dry. From here Father Zahm returned to 'Tapirapoan, accompanied by Sigg. Yeaasooy jusay &q ydoasojoyd D mwoly SulUrp ay2 OF owWTI UF a]AstyAr pays daap jo pury ve mayq fayI Yoryar y8noiyy sadid pativd uaqunu y suvIpUy Sloe g out fo s0Uep oY], CHAPTER VII WITH A MULE-TRAIN ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND From this point we were to enter a still wilder region, the land of the naked Nhambiquaras. On February 3 the weather cleared and we started with the mule-train and two ox-carts. Fiala and Lieutenant Lauriad6é stayed at Utiarity to take canoes and go down the Papagaio, which had not been descended by any scientific party, and perhaps by no one. They were then to descend the Juruena and Tapajos, thereby performing a necessary part of the work of the expedition. Our remaining party consisted of Colonel Rondon, Lieutenant Lyra, the doctor, Oliveira, Cherrie, Miller, Kermit, and myself. On the Juruena we expected to meet the pack ox-train with Captain Amilcar and Lieutenant Mello ; the other Brazilian members of the party had returned. We had now begun the difficult part of the expedition. The pium flies were becoming a pest. There was much fever and beriberi in the country we were entering. The feed for the animals was poor ; the rains had made the trails slippery and difficult; and many, both of the mules and the oxen, were already weak, and some had to be abandoned. We left the canoe, the motor, and the gasolene; we had hoped to try them on the Amazonian rivers, but we were obliged to cut down everything that was not absolutely indispensable. 195 196 ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND [cz#ar. v1I Before leaving we prepared for shipment back to the museum some of the bigger skins, and also some of the weapons and utensils of the Indians, which Kermit had collected. These included woven fillets, and fillets made of macaw feathers, for use in the dances, woven belts, a gourd in which the sacred drink is offered to the god Enoerey, wickerwork baskets, flutes or pipes, anklet rattles, hammocks, a belt of the kind used by the women in carrying the babies, with the weaving-frame. All these were Parecis articles. He also secured from the Nhambiquaras wickerwork baskets of a different type, and bows and arrows. ‘The bows were seven feet long and the arrows five feet. There were blunt-headed arrows for birds, arrows with long, sharp wooden blades for tapir, deer, and other mammals; and the poisoned war-arrows, with sharp barbs, poison-coated and bound on by fine thongs, and with a long, hollow wooden guard to slip over the entire point and protect it until the time came to use it. When people talk glibly of “idle” savages they ignore the immense labour entailed by many of their industries, and the really extraordinary amount of work they accomplish by the skilful use of their primitive and ineffective tools. It was not until early in the afternoon that we started into the “ sertdéo,’* as Brazilians call the wilderness. We drove with us a herd of oxen for food. After going about fifteen miles we camped beside the swampy head- waters of a little brook. It was at the spot where nearly seven years previously Rondon and Lyra had camped on the trip when they discovered Utiarity Falls and penetrated to the Juruena. When they reached this place they had been thirty-six hours without food. * Pronounced “sairtown,” as nearly as, with our preposterous methods of spelling and pronunciation, I can render it. NOISY FROGS 197 They killed a bush deer—a small deer—and ate literally every particle. The dogs devoured the entire skin. For much of the time on this trip they lived on wild fruit, and the two dogs that remained alive would wait eagerly under the trees and eat the fruit that was skaken down. In the late afternoon the piums were rather bad at this camp, but we had gloves and head-nets, and were not bothered; and, although there were some mos- quitoes, we slept well under our mosquito-nets. The frogs in the swamp uttered a peculiar, loud shout. Miller told of a little tree-frog in Colombia which swelled itself out with air, until it looked like the frog in Aisop’s fables, and then brayed like a mule; and Cherrie told of a huge frog in Guiana that uttered a short, loud roar. Next day the weather was still fair. Our march lay through country like that which we had been traversing for ten days. Skeletons of mules and oxen were more frequent ; and once or twice by the wayside we passed the graves of officers or men who had died on the road. Barbed wire encircled the desolate little mounds. We camped on the west bank of the Burity River. Here there is a balsa, or ferry, run by two Parecis Indians, as employés of the Telegraphic Commission, under the Colonel. Each had a thatched house, and each had two wives—all these Indians are pagans. All were dressed much like the poorer peasants of the Brazilian back-country, and all were pleasant and well-behaved. The women ran the ferry about as well as the men. They had no cultivated fields, and for weeks they had been living only on game and honey; and they hailed with joy our advent and the quantities of beans and rice which, together with some beef, the Colonel left 198 ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND [cuar. vi with them. They feasted most of the night. Their houses contained their hammocks, baskets, and other belongings, and they owned some poultry. In one house was a tiny parakeet, very much at home, and familiar, but by no means friendly, with strangers. There are wild Nhambiquaras in the neighbourhood, and recently several of these had menaced the two ferrymen with an attack, even shooting arrows at them. The ferrymen had driven them off by firing their rifles in the air; and they expected and received the Colonel’s praise for their self-restraint ; for the Colonel is doing all he can to persuade the Indians to stop their blood- feuds. The rifles were short and light Winchester car- bines, of the kind so universally used by the rubber- gatherers and other adventurous wanderers in the forest wilderness of Brazil. There were a number of rubber- trees in the neighbourhood, by the way. We enjoyed a good bath in the Burity, although it was impossible to make headway by swimming against the racing current. There were few mosquitoes. On the other hand, various kinds of piums were a little too abundant; they vary from things like small gnats to things like black flies. The small stingless bees have no fear and can hardly be frightened away when they light on the hands or face; but they never bite, and merely cause a slight tickling as they crawl over the skin. There were some big bees, however, which, although they crawled about harmlessly after lighting if they were undisturbed, yet stung fiercely if they were molested. The insects were not ordinarily a serious bother, but there were occasional hours when they were too numerous for comfort, and now and then I had to do my writing in a head-net and gauntlets. The night we reached the Burity it rained heavily, Tres Burity From a photograph by Kernut Roosevelt The kitchen under the ox-hide at Campos Novos From a photograph by Theodore Roosevelt CROSSING THE BURITY 199 and next day the rain continued. In the morning the mules were ferried over, while the oxen were swum across. Half a dozen of our men—whites, Indians, and negroes, all stark naked and uttering wild cries— drove the oxen into the river, and then, with powerful overhand strokes, swam behind and alongside them as they crossed, half-breasting the swift current. It was a fine sight to see the big, long-horned, staring beasts swimming strongly, while the sinewy naked men urged them forward, utterly at ease in the rushing water. We made only a short day's journey, for, owing to the lack of grass, the mules had to be driven off nearly three miles from our line of march, in order to get them feed. We camped at the headwaters of a little brook called Huatsui, which is Parecis for “ monkey.” Accompanying us on this march was a soldier bound for one of the remoter posts. With him trudged his wife. ‘They made the whole journey on foot. There were two children. One was so young that it had to be carried alternately by the father and mother. The other, a small boy of eight, and much the best of the party, was already a competent wilderness worker. He bore his share of the belongings on the march, and when camp was reached sometimes himself put up the family shelter. They were mainly of negro blood. Struck by the woman’s uncomplaining endurance of fatigue, we offered to take her and the baby in the automobile, while it accompanied us. But, alas! this proved to be one of those melancholy cases where the effort to relieve hardship well endured results only in showing that those who endure the adversity cannot stand even a slight prosperity. The woman proved a querulous traveller in the auto, complaining that she was not made as comfortable as, apparently, she had expected ; and 200 ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND [cuap. vil after one day the husband declared he was not willing to have her go unless he went too; so the family resumed their walk. In this neighbourhood there were multitudes of the big, gregarious, crepuscular, or nocturnal spiders, which I have before mentioned. On arriving in camp, at about four in the afternoon, I ran into a number of remains of their webs, and saw a very few of the spiders themselves sitting in the webs midway between trees. I then strolled a couple of miles up the road ahead of us, under the line of telegraph-poles. It was still bright sun- light, and no spiders were out ; in fact, I did not suspect their presence along the line of telegraph-poles, although I ought to have done so, for I continually ran into long strings of tough, fine web, which got across my face or hands or rifle-barrel. I returned just at sunset, and the spiders were out in force. I saw dozens of colonies, each of scores or hundreds of individuals. Many were among the small trees alongside the broad, cleared trail. But most were dependent from the wire itself. Their webs had all been made or repaired since I had passed. Kach was sitting in the middle of his own wheel, and all the wheels were joined to one another ; and the whole pendent fabric hung by fine ropes from the wire above, and was, in some cases, steadied by guy-ropes, thrown thirty feet off to little trees alongside. I watched them until nightfall, and evidently, to them, after their day’s rest, their day’s work had just begun. Next morning —owing to a desire to find out what the facts were as regards the ox-carts, which were in difficulties —Cherrie, Miller, Kermit, and I, walked back to the Burity River, where Colonel Rondon had spent the night. It was a misty, overcast morning, and the spiders in the webs that hung from the telegraph-wire were just going to LACK OF FORAGE 201 their day homes. ‘These were in and under the big, white china insulators on the telegraph-poles. Hundreds of spiders were already climbing up into these. When, two or three hours later, we returned, the sun was out, and not a spider was to be seen. Here we had to cut down our baggage and rearrange the loads for the mule-train. Cherrie and Miller had a most workmanlike equipment, including a very light tent and two light flies. One fly they gave for the kitchen use, one fly was allotted to Kermit and me, and they kept only the tent for themselves. Colonel Rondon and Lyra went in one tent, the doctor and Oliveira in another. Each of us got rid of everything above the sheer necessities. This was necessary because of the condition of the baggage-animals. The oxen were so weak that the effort to bring on the carts had to be abandoned. Nine of the pack-mules had already been left on the road during the three days’ march from Utiarity. In the first expeditions into this country all the baggage-animals had died ; and even in our case the loss was becoming very heavy. This state of affairs is due to the scarcity of forage and the type of country. Good grass is scanty, and the endless leagues of sparse, scrubby forest render it exceedingly difficult to find the animals when they wander. They must be turned absolutely loose to roam about and pick up their scanty subsistence, and must be given as long a time as possible to feed and rest; even under these conditions most of them grow weak when, as in our case, it is impossible to carry corn. They cannot be found again until after daylight, and then hours must be spent in gathering them; and this means that the march must be made chiefly during the heat of the day, the most trying time. Often some of the animals would not be brought in until 202 ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND [czar. vu so late that it was well on in the forenoon, perhaps mid- day, before the bulk of the pack-train started ; and they reached the camping-place as often after nightfall as before it. Under such conditions many of the mules and oxen grew constantly weaker, and ultimately gave out ; and it was imperative to load them as lightly as possible, and discard all luxuries, especially heavy or bulky luxuries. Travelling through a wild country where there is little food for man or beast is beset with difficulties almost inconceivable to the man who does not himself know this kind of wilderness, and especially to the man who only knows the ease of civilization. A scientific party of some size, with the equipment necessary in order to do scientific work, can only go at all if the men who actually handle the problems of food and transportation do their work thoroughly. Our march continued through the same type of high, nearly level upland, covered with scanty, scrubby forest. It is the kind of country known to the Brazilians as ‘ chapadéo ”—pronounced almost as if it were a French word and spelled shapadén. Our camp on the fourth night was in a beautiful spot, an open grassy space, beside a clear, cool, rushing little river. We ourselves reached this, and waded our beasts across the deep, narrow stream, in the late afternoon; and we then enjoyed a bath and swim. The loose bullocks arrived at sunset, and with shrill cries the mounted herdsmen urged them into and across the swift water. The mule- train arrived long after nightfall, and it was not deemed wise to try to cross the laden animals. Accordingly the loads were taken off and brought over on the heads of the men; it was fine to see the sinewy, naked figures bearing their burdens through the broken moonlit water to the hither bank. The night was cool and pleasant. THE JURUENA AND TAPAJOS RIVERS 203 We kindled a fire and sat beside the blaze. Then, healthily hungry, we gathered around the ox-hides to a delicious dinner of soup, beef, beans, rice, and coffee. Next day we made a short march, crossed a brook, and camped by another clear, deep, rapid little river, swollen by the rains. All these rivers that we were crossing run actually into the Juruena, and therefore form part of the headwaters of the Tapajos; for the Tapajos is a mighty river, and the basin which holds its headwaters covers an immense extent of country. This country and the adjacent regions, forming the high interior of western Brazil, will surely some day support a large industrial population ; of which the advent would be hastened, although not necessarily in permanently better fashion, if Colonel Rondon’s anticipations about the development of mining, especially gold-mining, are realized. In any event the region will be a healthy home for a considerable agricultural and pastoral popu- lation. Above all, the many swift streams, with their numerous waterfalls, some of great height and volume, offer the chance for the upgrowth of a number of big manufacturing communities, knit by railroads to one another and to the Atlantic coast and the valleys of the Paraguay, Madeira, and the Amazon, feeding and being fed by the dwellers in the rich, hot, alluvial lowlands that surround this elevated territory. The work of Colonel Rondon and his associates of the Telegraphic Commission has been to open this great and virgin land to the knowledge of the world and to the service of their nation. In doing so they have incidentally founded the Brazilian school of exploration. Before their day almost all the scientific and regular exploration of Brazil was done by foreigners. But, of course, there was much exploration and settlement by 204 ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND [cuap. vu nameless Brazilians, who were merely endeavouring to make new homes or advance their private fortunes: in recent years by rubber-gatherers, for instance, and a century ago by those bold and restless adventurers, partly of Portuguese and partly of Indian blood, the Paolistas, from one of whom Colonel Rondon is himself descended on his father’s side. . The camp by this river was in some old and grown- up fields, once the seat of a rather extensive maize and mandioc cultivation by the Nhambiquaras. On this day Cherrie got a number of birds new to the collection, and two or three of them probably new to science. We had found the birds for the most part in worn plumage, for the breeding season, the southern spring and northern fall, was over. But some birds were still breeding. In the tropics the breeding season is more irregular than in the north. Some birds breed at very different times from that chosen by the majority of their fellows ; some can hardly be said to have any regular season ; Cherrie had found one species of honey-creeper breeding in every month of the year. Just before sunset and just after sunrise big, noisy, blue-and-yellow macaws flew over this camp. ‘They were plentiful enough to form a loose flock, but each pair kept to itself, the two individuals always close together and always separated from the rest. Although not an abundant, it was an interesting, fauna which the two naturalists found in this upland country, where hitherto no collections of birds and mammals had been made. Miller trapped several species of opossums, mice, and rats which were new to him. Cherrie got many birds which he did not recognize. At this camp, among totally strange forms, he found an old and familiar acquaintance. Before breakfast he brought in several birds: a dark-coloured flycatcher, with white CROSSING THE JURUENA 205 forehead and rump and two very long tail-feathers; a black and slate-blue tanager; a black ant-thrush with a concealed white spot on its back, at the base of the neck, and its dull-coloured mate; and other birds which he believed to be new to science, but whose relationships with any of our birds are so remote that it is hard to describe them save in technical language. Finally, among these unfamiliar forms was a veery, and the sight of the rufous-olive back and faintly spotted throat of this singer of our northern Junes made us almost home- sick. Next day was brilliantly clear. The mules could not be brought in until quite late in the morning, and we had to march twenty miles under the burning tropical sun, right in the hottest part of the day. From a rise of ground we looked back over the vast, sunlit land- scape, the endless rolling stretches of low forest. Mid- way on our journey we crossed a brook. The dogs minded the heat much. They continually ran off to one side, lay down in a shady place, waited until we were several hundred yards ahead, and then raced after us, overtook us, and repeated the performance. The pack-train came in about sunset; but we ourselves reached the Juruena in the middle of the afternoon. The Juruena is the name by which the Tapajos goes along its upper course. Where we crossed, it was a deep, rapid stream, flowing in a heavily wooded valley with rather steep sides. We were ferried across on the usual balsa, a platform on three dugouts, running by the force of the current on a wire trolley. There was a clearing on each side, with a few palms, and on the farther bank were the buildings of the telegraph station. This is a wild country, and the station was guarded by a few soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Marino, 206 ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND [cuap. vir a native of Rio Grande do Sul, a blond man who looked like an Englishman—an agreeable companion, and a good and resolute officer, as all must be who do their work in this wilderness. The Juruena was first followed at the end of the eighteenth century by the Portuguese explorer Franco, and not again until over a hundred years had elapsed, when the Telegraphic Commission not only descended, but for the first time accurately placed and mapped its course. There were several houses on the rise of the farther bank, all with thatched roofs, some of them with walls of upright tree-trunks, some of them daub and wattle. Into one of the latter, with two rooms, we took our belongings. The sand-flies were bothersome at night, coming through the interstices in the ordinary mosquito- nets. The first night they did this I got no sleep until morning, when it was cool enough for me to roll myself in my blanket and put on a head-net. Afterward we used fine nets of a kind of cheese-cloth. They were hot, but they kept out all, or almost all, of the sand- flies and other small tormentors. Here we overtook the rearmost division of Captain Amilcar’s bullock-train. Our own route had diverged, in order to pass the great falls. Captain Amilcar had come direct, overtaking the pack-oxen, which had left Tapirapoan before we did, laden with material for the Divida trip. He had brought the oxen through in fine shape, losing only three beasts with their loads, and had himself left the Juruena the morning of the day we reached there. His weakest animals left that evening, to make the march by moonlight ; and as it was desirable to give them thirty-six hours’ start, we halted for a day on the banks of the river. It was not a wasted day. In addition to bathing and washing our clothes, the qacesooy pimdsy